Oculus Rift aquisition rises a simple question:
even tough KS campaign for KC: D was only an admitted test of consumer base, is there any guarantee the project will not be sold to any large publishing house (and of course changed to attract more broad audience at expenses of gameplay) once it starts showing its full potential?
Palmer Luckey in the end “had his price”. What will be Mr. Bakala’s price, given the fact he is a man of business, not a tech/game enthusiast?
Nailing you down on the question whether ‘KC: D will be sold to any large publishing house’, I might answer you a relatively solid “nay”. What information you may have missed (due to it has been given pretty early as reason to the kickstarter campaign), the Warhorses already did asked some “renown” publishers if they are interested in Kingdom Come, which they weren’t. If, possibly, one of those might knock back again ‘Hey, sorry about that answer last time you’ve asked, but we’ve possibly changed our minds…’, I believe the Warhorses won’t fall down to happily hug the publisher’s men in relieve.
They were rejected once, and now, that they know, the gamer’s interests are with them(contrary to what most asked publishers did believe) , they gonna kick some arsies. 
Also in some interview, Mr. Vávra did mention their interested to develop their own ideas of the game, instead of the ideas of some publisher-who-just-thinks-to-know-the-gamer’s-mind-better… 
They really want to give KC: D their own signature.
That’s the way it should be, and I really want to know where this is going, 'cause up to now it sounds awesome… ;>
If the KC: D gets offered $2.000.000.000 then the main investor / primary stock holder, will sell the game for sure. But the good news is they could immediately start a new game afterwards which would be much better than the original one because of the larger budget. But this is not very likely since the publishers and other game companies have not shown much interest in the product. Still it is also widely unrealistic that any company would give 2 Billion dollars for a game, but if it was like 25 - 50 Million dollars then that is possible.
I wouldnt blame them for taking the money but remember a lot of the publishers passed and no one wanted in and the kickstarter was to prove that there was a viable gaming population.
Since there is and that the funder has already agreed to back to the game with help from us why would they sell now?
Wait till act one is done and out the door. Then you will see movement if I were a betting man.
Dan Vavra hasn’t said if KCD it will adapt for Oculus?
This acquisition by Facebook just rubs me the wrong way. To me, it diminishes the point of Kickstarter: (IMO)
To help people passionate about a project that either have no other choice but to start a funding page or think that community crowd funding by the fans/people who believe in the project is the way to go.
If I were a backer of the Oculus Rift I would feel like I was lied to.
“So you backed my project because you believed in my work and wanted to contribute to a passionate of mine? Well, I think I’ll take your money, use it to start a company and then sell the product that you helped fund because you believed in me and my work to a giant corporation that had no involvement at all in the funding of this project and bought it to make money off of it.”
And here’s the thing, Facebook owns the Oculus Rift, right? So because they own it Facebook has no reason at all to deliver on the promises made during the Kickstarter campaign because they didn’t make those promises. They can go ahead and to whatever they want with the Oculus Rift; turning it into whatever they want, with no regard to what it was originally intend to be in the first place or who made it possible for this project to exist. (Kickstarter backers)
Sure, Facebook might believe in this project too, which is a good step in the right direction, but Facebook didn’t buy the Oculus Rift because they believe in it, they bought it to make money off of it. This is the major difference between crowd funding and corporations: I crowd fund because I want to see people who are passionate about their work succeed, and I never demand that they pay me in return for my investment because seeing that I helped create something that I consider true quality work is my own reward.
In contrast to this, do you honestly think that Facebook would have bought the Oculus Rift if they couldn’t make a buck off of it? No! When corporations do things like this it’s money first, believing in the project second.
To put this in example suppose after we funded Kingdom Come: Deliverance, EA went up to them and said: “I’m give you 2 billion dollars for the rights of the franchise and development rights for your game.”
I would be all like, “I funded this project because I believed in Warhorse Studio’s ability to make this game, not EA’s or anyone else’s. It’s your project and your idea, your passion. Some other company shouldn’t be able to buy those away from you.”
And sure, maybe if the people behind Oculus Rift didn’t sell their idea to Facebook, Facebook would just go ahead and make their own version that would have more money to work with and more people developing it. But in this case I guess it all depends on what is more important to you: Money and the financial security of not having to deal with competitors or Integrity and building your project that other people gave you their own money for in the way that you want it to be realized.
You all know how I feel about this. Do you think selling the Oculus Rift was the right decision and what impact it might have on future Kickstarters? I think me and many others will be cautious about pledging 'cause we don’t want a project that we helped fund to be bought by a corporation that couldn’t give two sh*ts about us later.
Iam pretty sure the legal obligations (that are pretty weak with kickstarter projects) was transferred when they brought the company. So Facebook is likely to have the same legal obligations.
Truthfully…I think its really up to the individual and how much they trust the developer to make what they wanted.
Do I expect Warhorse or CIG to sellout and give their IPs to other companies…no. But in the end… it is their decision to make. As long as they honor the Kickstarter goals I paid for…I don’t see myself as having much pull in their decisions.
But then again…I think we’re talking about different beasts when we compare the Rift to Kingdom Come…
Warhorse has made their feelings for big name publishers well known… and their passion for their project is palpable… OR was hardware being developed to take the first proud steps into a new technological age. In time…it was only natural that they would garner the attention of some giant tech or social corporation because those business see something they can adapt for the general public and make a killing.
In the end…even if the Rift doesn’t end up being the high end niche gaming peripheral they started out to be, they’ve opened the floodgates to a slew of new technology…because they proved that it could be done and that people would buy it. There will be high end VR sets for gaming eventually…even if it isn’t the Rift.
At the start i was like Seviteal, but now i think this is a good change, Facebook has show, with instagram and whatsapp, that he never change nothing, if the program runs perfect, he don’t touch nothing. Facebook only need the information and the money. With OR will be a exactly than instagram and whatsapp
Chris Roberts have commented on this topic:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13783-Letter-From-The-Chairman-41-Million
(scroll down a bit)
I think he have some very good points about why It might very well be the right choise Oculus made.
Here is part of it:
In order for the Rift to succeed, it really needed a lot more funding than it has raised from its past two VC rounds. Hardware is expensive: it’s one thing to perfect the technology, but before you can sell a single Rift, you need to spend hundreds of millions on manufacturing and building a supply chain if you intend to make the Rift (and Virtual Reality) relevant for the mass market. Microsoft invested well over a billion dollars just to launch the Xbox One this fall! My hope is that Facebook’s funding will let Oculus compete with much bigger companies and deliver an attractively priced consumer headset at the scale needed for mass market adoption without the loss of the incredible passion that convinced me to back the project. I haven’t heard or seen anything to the contrary so until I do we are fully committed to supporting the Rift.
And why it is not relevant for CIG to do the same.
don’t worry! We have no plans nor interest in following this path! We don’t need to go to anyone with deep pockets to make OUR dream a reality. To mass-produce hardware like the Rift, you need an outlay of hundreds of millions of dollars. Luckily our ships are digital so we have hardly any cost of goods, just the cost of developing the universe of Star Citizen…
And since this is a single player game, the same is even more true for warhorse… If they stick to selling the game online where the buyer download it, is can simply be done true Steam.
