[mortenjorck]

It does, but "requires a Facebook account" doesn't entirely capture the nature of Oculus' requirements. If, for instance, Twitter sold hardware that required a Twitter account, that would indeed be the beginning and end of it – create a new Twitter account for the hardware, and off you go.

What Oculus requires, however, is your Facebook account, as in the one you created over a decade ago and never use but is full of all your friends' pictures of their children and/or political memes.

Creating a separate account just for using the hardware is not only expressly forbidden, but can result in you being locked out of your device: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/oculus-quest-2-users-banne... And if you truly do not have an existing account, good luck convincing the algorithms of that.

[knownjorbist]

Interesting, did not know that they could ban people for that. I did exactly this and haven't had an issue yet. Maybe because I've purchased games through their store. Fingers crossed.

[ericflo]

No, there are numerous accounts online of people losing all their purchases because of violating their terms of service or whatever. Having purchased content won't help.

Here's one from a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/ouubx1/deleted_face...

Or this from a week ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/osbbkj/i_lost_my_en...

[Razengan]

> Creating a separate account just for using the hardware is not only expressly forbidden, but can result in you being locked out of your device

Wow. That is despicable.

[doopy1]

I deleted by FB account and created a new dummy account for Oculus. No issues.

[SilverRed]

FB runs bots over the platform to detect these accounts. Since they have everyone's contact list, they can just check your friends list and see if you appear in their contact lists. If not, they will lock you out and require you to send a photo of your ID.

And even if they have not yet, they can at any time and all of your games and hardware get locked which is permitted in their ToS. Why would you want to take this risk when the alternative platforms do not have real identity rules.

[ehsankia]

Hmm, I can understand getting banned for having a side account. But GP claims they fully deleted their account, and created a new one. What is Facebook gonna do, punish them for no longer having a FB account? What if I happened to have deleted my FB account a year ago and want to play Oculus now?

For people who don't care about the account they made a decade ago and no longer use, this seems like a reasonable and probably safe approach.

[beezischillin]

I was asked by Facebook to create a second account and hand the details over to their developers in order for them to have access to a platform we're developing for some validation regarding our use of OAuth, it's probably also against their TOS, yet had I not done that they would've locked us and our users of OAuth...

[vmception]

I’ve dealt with this before, I routinely break my social graphs. New email address, dont link a phone number or not one that youve ever given to anybody.

The trick is, on the first session upload a profile photo or two or three, and actually friend a few people.

YMMV

[saddlerustle]

The same is true of an Xbox and a Microsoft account. The sign up flow requires a full name and the ToS requires you not to give false information.

[Rebelgecko]

Last I checked, it wasn't a TOS violation to have multiple Microsoft accounts like it is with FB. Microsoft even has some official support for for work vs personal accounts

[moron4hire]

> Creating a separate account just for using the hardware is not only expressly forbidden, but can result in you being locked out of your device:

I'm not one to defend Facebook, but what you've said is just not true. That only happened to a handful of people at the very beginning and was likely a moderation bug. People aren't getting banned for having burner accounts.

[insulanus]

It's not important what is or is not happening right now, or even a little while ago.

The TOS expressly allows them to lock you out of your account if they detect you using an account that is not your Facebook Real Identity (tm)

They are allowed to brick your Oculus at any time, with no recourse.

See "I want to use a name different from my legal name for my Facebook account." Here https://support.oculus.com/fb/

And "If I’m having problems accessing my Facebook account, can I still use my Oculus device?" here https://www.oculus.com/blog/facebook-accounts-on-oculus/

https://www.facebook.com/help/112146705538576/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_real-name_policy_cont... https://www.wired.com/2015/06/facebook-real-name-policy-prob... https://media.business-humanrights.org/media/documents/files...

[zmmmmm]

it's hard to judge how frequent but there are a continuous stream of people and even one prominent YouTube reviewer who got their whole FB account banned (sometimes their actual lifelong account).

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/search?q=banned&restrict_sr=...

[sdflhasjd]

I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion over several years, so I find it very hard to see it as a "moderation bug"

[denkmoon]

You've had burner accounts disabled, or you've had your oculus quest 2 disabled for using burner accounts multiple times over several years? Impressive considering it's been out for less than a year.