Aa reported by TechCrunch on Tuesday, July 15, Oculus Rift developer Oculus VR is putting down the banhammer on anyone who has pre-ordered the virtual reality device and plans to re-sell it on eBay.
On eBay, there’s a listing of both the Oculus Rift’s Development Kit 1 and Development Kit 2 available to auction for first morning availability, and the bids and prices range from $255 to $5,000 (according to TechCrunch), the latter being well over the Oculus Rift’s official pre-order price of $350.
According to TechCrunch, those who have already pre-ordered their Oculus Rift are understandably angered by the idea of someone undercutting their waiting line, of which they’ve been a part of for months.
Within a few hours, after gathering more information on the Oculus Rift re-sell that offended the most, the exact time of the partially-anonymous re-seller’s own order for their Oculus Rift was found, and on Tuesday afternoon the community manager of Oculus VR confirmed that the offender’s order was now cancelled. The eBay listing of the offending re-sell was also cancelled shortly afterwards.
“ Don’t worry guys. We found him and we cancelled his order, ” Oculus VR’s community manager said, according to TechCrunch.
After the incident, and after word started spreading of the resold Oculus Rift orders being cancelled, those waiting for their own Oculus Rift started to voice concerns that they might have been framed. With the aid of early Development Kit 2 buyers, a shipping timeline was established with any and all shared details on pre-orders, and further concerns started cropping up about using the aggregated details against genuine buyers to obtain an Oculus Rift before anyone else in the waiting line.
“ Just so everyone is clear, the information provided alone was not enough to take action. We perform our own investigations with tools at our disposal to make sure that there isn’t a false positive, ” Oculus VR’s community service lead noted, according to TechCrunch.
“ Our community is awesome! Thank you for helping us make sure that we are getting kits into the hands of devs and shutting down profiteers. ”
Oculus VR soon found others who had pre-ordered multiple Oculus Rifts to later re-sell, and thus their entire orders were banned in one fell swoop.
We’ll bring you more Oculus Rift-related news should further information reach our ears.
[ TechCrunch ]