Some VR developers cut ties with Oculus over Palmer Luckey funding pro-Trump memes

Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey is bankrolling a group that creates and shares occasionally racist memes to promote Donald Trump. The organization Luckey is supporting is offensive enough that some developers are pulling their support for the Oculus Rift VR headset.

Since The Daily Beast published the report, a number of developers have made public statements claiming they no longer want to work with Oculus — which has led to Luckey posting an apologetic response on Facebook. The $600 Oculus Rift is one of the first high-end consumer headsets to land in the slowly growing VR market. Facebook owns Oculus, and the two companies are attempting to lay a foundation for Oculus’ VR business. Analysts predict that virtual reality could generate as much as $40 billion in revenues by 2020.

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For now, however, VR is in a precarious position due to the high price of the hardware and the high cost of the machines to run it. Oculus needs all the support it can get, but, instead, some developers are backing away.

Here’s a running list of the developers who are speaking publicly about pulling away from Oculus:

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SUPERHYPERCUBE will not be supporting Oculus. https://t.co/sqtAzZ8hJZ

— Polytron (@Polytron) September 23, 2016

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Hey @oculus, @PalmerLuckey's actions are unacceptable. NewtonVR will not be supporting the Oculus Touch as long as he is employed there.

— Tomorrow Today Labs (@TTLabsVR) September 23, 2016

https://twitter.com/ScrutaGames/status/779134849512857601

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I backed Oculus's kickstarter, bought developer kits, was working to adapt non-gaming tools for work site management. Not any more.

— Mark Sumner (@Devilstower) September 23, 2016

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I’m cancelling Touch support in my game as long as Palmer works for Oculus.

— Kit Farman (@kitfm) September 23, 2016

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yes – not about political views though. It's how he is doing this – funding self described shitposting

— Lee Vermeulen (@Alientrap) September 23, 2016

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