Developers react: Facebook buys Oculus VR

Facebook announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Oculus VR, creator of the Rift VR headset, for $2 billion -- $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock, plus an additional $300 million in cash and stock based on "the achievement of certain milestones." The news spread like wildfire across social networks and sparked a torrent of responses, including one from The Social Network man himself. "The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there's a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform," stated Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post announcing the deal. "We're going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this." "But this is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences." To say there was "a lot of interest" from game developers in the potential for the Oculus Rift prior to today's news is an understatement. We're less than a week out from GDC 2014, where Oculus announced the second-generation Rift development kit and kept a spacious demo area packed with attendees throughout the show. But how many developers are still interested in the platform, now that it will be under the aegis of Facebook? We've taken the liberty of collecting some choice responses published by developers and developer parody accounts in response to today's news -- reactions range from thoughts on how this might empower Oculus VR to scale its developer outreach program, to more tongue-in-cheek concerns about what this means for high-profile Oculus personnel like John Carmack and some flat-out vitriol.