[mtgx]

That makes Palmer look even more like a greedy bastard, and that all he cared about was money all along. When he heard the $2 billion amount he was probably like: "So you want us to kill all of our gaming plans now, or should we wait a year to lay it easy on the fans?"

[christoph]

I don't think people should be too harsh on Palmer. He's still very young. To me it feels like Facebook bought this insanely cheap. It's $17bn cheaper than Whatsapp.

I'm sure there was some smooth talking involved in the deal. I couldn't help but think of the billion dollars scene from The Social Network[1] when I heard about the deal.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e0n7vTLz1U

[sillysaurus3]

Palmer could have made far more money by waiting. Maybe he was tired of Oculus.

[lazyjones]

Serious question - why would he need any more money? And how certain would that have been?

I can't imagine anyone who hasn't been deep into "FU money" for a while actually choosing "perhaps far more than 2 billion later" over "2 billion now".

[MichaelGG]

Where do people get off commenting about how someone should have turned down $2BN? Do you have an authoritative source that shows he had solid offers for hundreds of millions? Otherwise where do you decide that he's being a "greedy bastard"?

Even this article says they got "freedom to operate independently" - who knows, maybe it's true.