Facebook can’t seem to catch a break.
The massive social networking platform spent much of 2018 plagued by ongoing security and data breaches, and it now seems that Brendan Iribe — co-founder and former CEO of Oculus — has announced plans to leave the company.
According to a report from TechCrunch, Iribe’s departure is reportedly based on Facebook’s decision to cancel Oculus’ next generation ‘Rift 2’ virtual reality headset.
Sources who spoke with TechCrunch said that Iribe didn’t want to “race to the bottom,” adding that Iribe and the Facebook executive team had “fundamentally different views on the future of Oculus that grew deeper over time.”
A Facebook spokesperson reportedly told TechCrunch that the Rift 2 PC VR is still a part of the company’s future product roadmap, but that most of the tech within the headset will be shifted to future products.
Iribe’s departure from Facebook comes less than a month after Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger decided to leave the company.
WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum left his position at Facebook in May 2018.
Facebook purchased Oculus VR for $2 billion USD in 2014, but legal proceedings between Oculus and Facebook in January 2017 revealed that the Menlo Park social networking giant may have paid as much as $3 billion USD for the virtual reality headset manufacturer.
Update: In a statement to VentureBeat, Oculus has noted that the Rift 2 is still in production. “[W]e aren’t quite ready to talk about the next version of Rift,” a spokesperson told us, “but PC VR is still a category we are investing in. It’s still a part of our strategy — we’re continuing work across product and content and you’ll see this manifest next year. Additionally, Nate continues to lead the Rift/PC team and there are no changes there.”
Source: TechCrunch
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