Deleting your Facebook account forfeits Oculus VR games you already paid for

In August, Facebook announced that consumers who use its Oculus virtual reality headsets would be required to log in with their Facebook accounts in order to play games. The transition went into effect earlier this month, and it comes with a catch. If at any point you decide to delete your Facebook account, you immediately forfeit your access to any games or VR experiences you purchased through the Oculus store.

The gotcha was spotted last week, and began to surface first on Twitter, only to be confirmed Friday by the team at UploadVR.

According to Facebook, those who create a new Oculus account will be required to use their Facebook credentials. Those who previously used a separate username and password to access the Oculus store have two years before the transition will be forced upon them. Once users flip the switch, they’re bound by a new end-user license agreement that formally entangles their VR purchases and their Facebook account.

“Deleting your Facebook account will also delete your Oculus information,” warns Facebook in the Deactivation and Deletion section of its iOS app. “This includes your app purchases and your achievements. You will no longer be able to return any apps and will lose any existing store credits.”

Polygon spoke with Facebook’s vice president of play, Jason Rubin, last week to discuss the company’s move into cloud gaming. He said the decision to require Facebook credentials on Oculus accounts was contentious — even internally — but nonetheless necessary from his company’s perspective. In particular, he said it was very important to get consumers who purchase the new Quest 2 VR system on board.

“I’m very aware of Oculus’ decision to require a Facebook login. There are a lot of reasons for that, and I was involved in a lot of those conversations internally, and I certainly understand and don’t in any way dismiss the worries that people have or their desire not to have that happen,” Rubin said. “But Facebook has a massive amount of infrastructure that is built upon the idea that you are logged in, and we couldn’t do a lot of the things that we’re planning on doing in the future without unifying the Oculus user with that logged in state. We tried, over time, to keep those separate, but it just became more and more evident that eventually this needed to happen, and the longer we waited, the more users we had. Quest 2 is going to have a significant uptick in the number of people using it because it’s a great product, and if we had waited till after Quest 2, all of those users might have been disappointed.”

Update (Oct. 28): After our story was published, a Facebook representative reached out to add additional clarity. They compared a user’s Facebook account — which will be inclusive of their Oculus account going forward — as comparable to an Apple ID, a Microsoft account, or a Sony PlayStation account. Deleting all of those will similarly delete or disable your rights to the games you previously purchased licenses to. They also noted that the process of deletion clearly calls out the consequences. There’s also a “Cancel Deletion” option that allows users to undo the process within 30 days.