And that is exactly one of the (good) reasons people are afraid of. Facebook has produced little of value so far, especially nothing in the hardware sector. Their current main revenue is a more or less dying business with social media, so they try to diversify their current portfolio so when (not if) Facebook itself dies, the company (or rather, the money printing machine) continues.
How it will affect development is not known, but the direction we’re heading is vaguely known. Before the acquisition, the OR was seen as a revolution to (PC) gaming. Now, the OR was announced to be the thing for social media. Chat with your friends! In virtual lobbies! Because you need absolutely no social interaction with people anymore whatsoever!
Yes. They will certainly continue to develop it, but that’s (as mentioned above) the issue: Is it going to be developed for gaming or for some social mumbo jumbo? The requirements differ enormously.
The scary thing about the OR is that it has access to your complete screen - not just a game, everything you possibly do. Connect this to Facebook’s data mining behaviour and it becomes a really scary thought.
The argument “IT’S JUST SOFTWARE!!!1” is, in my opinion, really stupid. Yes, it’s software, maybe you can even re-write it to remove those parts - who’s going to care? Who is jailbreaking their iPhone? Who is rooting their Android to install a more current version that offers them more privacy?
By far not even anything close to an minority. And this is the issue: If it’s endangering your warranty or is simply too annoying to install (or not trustworthy enough), people are not going to bother. Assuming the homemade driver is not malicious, it will be a few people “safe” from it against hundred (thousands or even millions) who are not. It becomes a sort of ethical thing.
EULA are worth nothing, at least in Europe. Unless you were aware of the EULA before you purchased it - as far as I know, simply putting “BY BUYING THIS YOU AGREE TO THE LICENSE AT HTTP://BLORP” does not hold up, it’s void. It’s a huge attack on privacy and I’m sure that it would be ripped apart here.
As of now, this can go both ways. Facebook has little to lose, reputation-wise, so if they realy want to push social media into some weird, virtual state I’m sure they’ll go for it. They could continue the project as it was and really develop it for gaming primarily, social media secondary - but the stakes for that are not very high. They have no real experience in hardware development and their customer service (as well as customer interaction) in the past was rather questionable.
Therefore, I am disappointed about this turn of events. I’m looking forward for Sony’s project and some others. But in the meantime,