Game designer Cliff Bleszinski hit out against Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson for canceling the planned Oculus port of his hit game.
In a recent Tumblr post, Bleszinski said the "bratty and petty" decision made Notch look like "a pouty kid who is taking his ball and going home".
Notch announced the cancelation of Minecraft for the Oculus Rift following Facebook's $2 billion buyout of the VR company.
Tripping the RiftBook
Bleszinski's knock on Notch was a footnote in a broader post aimed at dissecting the internet's rage against the "RiftBook" deal.
"Oculus was making great strides, but they were not out of the woods yet. Someone somewhere needs to come up with a proper control scheme for it," Bleszinski began.
"More importantly, they needed an ecosystem. IF their system is going to be (hopefully) a dedicated system instead of a (ugh) peripheral they need their version of whatever the app store would be.
"Your device is only as good as the store and community around it; if users can't say shut up and take my money, if developers can't post their work then the device will ultimately flounder," he concluded, steering noticeably clear of references to microconsoles.
Bleszinski then turned his thoughts to the financial side of the Oculus deal, opening with a truism that many seem to have lost sight of.
"When a company raises money from venture capitalists the end game IS acquisition."
Finally, Bleszinski dismissed the betrayal that many of Oculus' original Kickstarter backers felt at the betrayal of RiftBook.
"The final bit of outrage that I'm calling out is the fact that Oculus was Kickstartered and that some of those folks who donated are outraged.
"Apparently some folks don't understand that donating to a Kickstarter gets you whatever reward you're told when you donate, you don't get equity, you don't get to participate in the fruits of a sale of a company like that.
"Crowdfunding can only take you so far, especially when you're doing something this ambitious. 'I donated money to add value to a company that was eventually sold!' Well, that's kind of how business works, folks, hate to be the bearer of bad news."
[source: Clifford Unchained]
