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

Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus
Image Credit: Oculus VR
@jeffgrubb

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.

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:

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