Just received an email from Meta, part of it states:
“Starting January 1, 2024, we will start deleting old Oculus accounts to ensure that we are not keeping Oculus account data longer than necessary. If you do not create a Meta account by this date, your Oculus data (including associated apps, content and games you have downloaded or purchased) will be deleted.”
I was happy to switch from my original Oculus/Facebook account to a Meta account back in October when I was prompted to, I never wanted the (originally mandatory) Facebook association in the first place.
But why wouldn't Meta just migrate these accounts automatically? I'm baffled by how the pros could possibly outweigh the cons for Meta here.
For people who don't touch their Quest for a year and a half that was associated with an e-mail account they don't check regularly, and then decide to dust the Quest off to play a game when their niece or nephew visits... and discover all their games are gone?
What the hell? The resulting hatred towards Meta is going to cost more in the long run than any extra money resulting in re-buying a couple of games.
I usually feel like I can understand when companies take user-hostile decisions because it's still easy to see how it makes sense for the company/investors. But here, I'm utterly stumped.
Nevertheless, this is where there need to be laws around this kind of thing. It should be illegal to delete digital purchases or delete accounts like this, end of story. Consumer protection laws are desperately needed here.