It was an open secret that the relationship between the co-founder of Oculus and the company that acquired it, Facebook, was going through a bad time. Today, days after one year of the release of the Rift, an end is put to a story of heartbreak that has ended up taking ahead of the one who was the image of an entire generation of Virtual Reality.
It was sung, some will say. It had been more than six months since the figure of Palmer Luckey was not allowed to be seen by the Oculus scenarios and the media and users were beginning to think that from Facebook they had not finished telling the whole truth. From that fateful day on which the news and the image of the young but perennially smiling boy jumped, the great inventor of Virtual Reality and champion of unprecedented success in Kickstater! if it was related to the smear campaign against the candidate for the presidency of the US government Hilary Clinton, everyone knew that this story would not end well at all. Well, Palmer’s day has come. And today Friday they will give you the typical cardboard box to put your plants and personal belongings in it.
The irony has made his Facebook exit almost coincide with that first day when his Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops traveled to Alaska to hand deliver the first commercial unit of the Rift model. Neither he nor the weird guy with whom the photograph was taken imagined that in a short time Facebook would get rid of what was once the paradigm of virtual success. Taking Palmer Luckey as an example, a complete course could be given on how to blow yourself up in the high-flying professional world: do something wrong, then take out an apology note out of time and end up hiding until the settlement reaches you by burofax. Chronicle of a business death announced, it could be summarized.
It will matter to many of you whether Palmer continues or not. But the boy has – and without a doubt, he will have – his place in the history of our current virtual reality. Would it have been the same without that Kickstarter campaign? Perhaps Carmack and company would have reached the same viewer on their own. If Oculus didn’t exist, the millions of Facebook would perhaps have gone to HTC and now everything would remain the same. In any case, and in the absence of knowing the ins and outs of his departure, the news leaves Oculus without one of its founding fathers, cover of Time and Forbes. We already know that the boy was not Steve Jobs, but it made many of us think that any of us could go as far as he had gone.
Official Facebook press release:
“Palmer will be dearly missed. Palmer’s legacy extends far beyond Oculus. His inventive spirit helped kickstart the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry. We’re thankful for everything he did for Oculus and VR, and we wish him all the best.”
[Echaremos mucho de menos a Palmer. Su legado se extiende más allá de Oculus. Su espíritu innovador ayudó a crear la revolución de la RV y construyó una industria. Le estamos muy agradecidos por todo lo que hizo por Oculus y por la RV, y le deseamos lo mejor]
Say. Long live your Hawaiian flip flops, end up where you end up giving your advice. The stakes are open: Palmer to Google’s Daydream? HTC Vive? Will you develop a new viewer? Time and millions of dollars will tell. So far, this week Palmer Luckey showed up at the doors of Facebook and Zuckerberg asked him: Do you know how to count? Well, let you know that we are not counting on you.
