Some Oculus Quest 2 Owners are Getting Banned From Using Their Headsets

oculus quest 2
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The Oculus Quest 2, the first Oculus headset to require new users to log in with a Facebook account rather than an Oculus account, started shipping out to customers this week. But thanks to that Facebook requirement, it might be weeks until some owners actually get to use one of the best VR headsets. That’s because, as UploadVR reported yesterday, some Oculus Quest 2 owners are claiming that their Facebook accounts are being disabled before they can actually log-in to and activate their device.

Oculus announced earlier this August that, starting this October, “anyone using an Oculus device for the first time will need to log in with a Facebook account.” This means Oculus Quest 2 buyers who don’t have Facebook accounts either have to create new ones or reactivate old ones to actually use their purchase. The problem comes, then, in some users getting almost instantaneous suspensions from Facebook when trying to sign up and needing to wait weeks to appeal them.

Yesterday, Oculus support tweeted out that it is aware of the issue, which prompted numerous reports of difficulty from users. One Reddit user complained that “I logged into Facebook’s website to lock down my profile, as I had no intention of using the social media site more than was needed, and within minutes of merging accounts and changing profile settings my account was banned.” On Twitter, another user posted the account denial screen that some are seeing, which says “You can’t use Facebook because your account, or activity on it, didn’t follow our community standards. We have already reviewed this decision and it can’t be reversed.”
 

 Oculus’ support post asks users seeing this message to send a support ticket to Oculus, but another Quest 2 buyer said that Oculus’ response to their ticket simply asked them to refer to Facebook’s help center.

Despite the Facebook account suspension message’s wording, you can appeal a Facebook ban, but it requires sending the website a picture of your driver’s license or some other photographic proof of identity. But the appeals process can be slow, thanks to what is likely human review, which means that Quest 2 owners who are facing difficulty may have to wait a while for their device to be anything other than a paperweight. 

The difficulty here is that Facebook has a unique “real-name” policy tied to its accounts, which asks users to register accounts under the “name they go by in everyday life.” The platform’s hope is that each user will only have one account, which represents who they actually are. And after pressure from the political sphere to crack down on accounts run by bots, the website has only become stricter on who it lets create accounts. So, unlike Twitter or Reddit, signing up for Facebook isn't as easy as just linking an email and pressing go.

This poses a problem when the service essentially acts as a key to start up your new $299 device. 

Facebook Vice President of Augmented and Virtual Reality Andrew Bosworth also addressed the issue on his Instagram.

"We are working really quickly through those [suspension cases] and resolving all those issues that come up." But in the meantime, he suggested the following advice:

"I think people should continue to make sure their Facebook accounts are in good standing before they buy the headset."

Michelle Ehrhardt

Michelle Ehrhardt is an editor at Tom's Hardware. She's been following tech since her family got a Gateway running Windows 95, and is now on her third custom-built system. Her work has been published in publications like Paste, The Atlantic, and Kill Screen, just to name a few. She also holds a master's degree in game design from NYU.

  • NewJohnny
    This is the future of tech. Wait until your car won't start because you can't log in.
    Reply
  • rgd1101
    pretty much. I will not buy any hardware that require cloud
    Reply
  • grimfox
    NewJohnny said:
    This is the future of tech. Wait until your car won't start because you can't log in.

    IIRC if you forget your fob because you are used to using your cellphone to unlock your Tesla, and you go outside either the Tesla's cellular or your phones cellular range...you're locked out. Both your phone and the vehicle need to be able to communicate to the internet in order to unlock your doors. Now you are locked out of your car and need to walk to call a tow truck to tow your vehicle back into cell range before you can open the doors again.

    Maybe in the distant future teslas will all be equipped with starlink radios and it wont be a problem, but yeah your "car wont start cause you can't log in" thing is already here.
    Reply
  • NewJohnny
    grimfox said:
    your "car wont start cause you can't log in" thing is already here.
    Sure, but what I meant was sitting in a fully functional car but not being able to go anywhere because the server is down or my account has been hacked.

    Making technologies artificially dependent on each other for profit or market protection is a recipe for disaster because corporations don't make a distinction between non-critical entertainment and life-saving equipment. The day I see a fibrillator on a subscription is the day I move to an off-grid cabin.
    Reply
  • Shadowclash10
    This is... hilarious, sad, and a bit scary all at once. This is why I refuse to get onto things like Stadia, Geforce Now - I've even started to make the switch to GOG from Steam/Ubisoft/etc etc as much as I can. Same concept.

    I think people should continue to make sure their Facebook accounts are in good standing before they buy the headset.

    This is so funny. Imagine if, to use your $400 GPU in your PC or whatever, Nvidia forced you to make an account (although you need to imagine Nvidia wanting all your personal data) and your real name and things like that. Honestly, that isn't such a ludicrious propisiton anymore. MS has already been pushing people to use Microsoft accounts for Windows 10 instead of local accounts pretty heavily.
    Reply
  • NewJohnny
    China's brilliant "social credit" system is where this is all heading. Citizens in China are already being denied access to public services like trains because their social credit score isn't high enough. One day, we'll wish for the days when it only applied to simple things like vr headsets.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    rgd1101 said:
    pretty much. I will not buy any hardware that require cloud
    Same here, I really don't like the idea of hardware being closely tied to online services that may disappear at any time and arbitrarily render the hardware completely unusable. Android devices may be tied to Google Play but are still mostly usable offline, apps can be side-loaded even on devices that have been banned from Play and still work fine - at least for now.
    Reply
  • escksu
    Thanks for this article. I will avoid this from now on
    Reply
  • Awev
    I already do not use FB much, and after they have started acting as a publisher, I am less inclined to use them. I have problems with there terms of use, as I do with YouTube (different issues, still part of the EULA), so I only use it to check on friends that forget what a telephone is for. When I learned that the Oculus 2 was going to be tied to FB I decided no way. I plan on building a new system in a couple years as VR matures, as head and eye tracking does not seem to work for me. Guess what VR company has been banned from my list officially as of today? Nice going Facebook.
    Reply
  • waltc3
    How very apropos that FB is now banning some of its own VR customers after banning a number of newsworthy posts that the FB censors want to hide from their readers! As if those readers won't leave FB and go where the speech is free to find out what FB is keeping from them...again...;)
    Reply