What you need to know
- Facebook has rebranded to Meta and will also sunset the Oculus branding.
- The Oculus Quest will become Meta Quest in 2022.
- Meta Quest will no longer require a personal Facebook account sometime in 2022. This rollout begins with work accounts later in 2021.
- You'll be able to delete your existing Facebook account and still maintain your VR library, according to Reality Labs VP Boz.
Updated with additional info on October 29 at 8:28 am.
Facebook announced a number of new concepts, technologies, and software at Connect 2021 — including its new name, Meta — but none may be quite as surprising as the company's move to drop the Oculus branding and, even further, to remove the Facebook login requirement for Quest headsets including the Oculus Quest 2.
In a blog post shared on Facebook, Facebook Reality Labs VP Andrew Bosworth (Boz) talked about how rebranding to Meta will affect the company and its many users going forward, including retiring the Oculus branding in 2022.
"For this reason, we're simplifying our brand architecture and shifting away from the Oculus brand. Starting in early 2022, you'll start to see the shift from Oculus Quest from Facebook to Meta Quest and Oculus App to Meta Quest App over time."
More than likely, we'll see this branding change as Meta moves toward new hardware, like the next-gen Quest headset Project Cambria, but we'll need to wait to get more details as everything progresses.
Boz later confirmed in a Tweet that you'll be able to delete your Facebook account and still continue to play the games you've purchased. That's a stark contrast from the current process, which deletes your entire library if your Facebook account is deleted or banned.
Further than that, Meta's push toward including everyone, everything, and every company in the metaverse means that the forced Facebook login on Quest headsets looks to be going away in 2022, as well.
During the Connect 2021 conference, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that they're "working on making it so you can log into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account." We reached out to Meta for clarification and a representative confirmed that the rollout will begin later this year with work accounts and will roll out more broadly in 2022.
It keeps getting better with each update
The Oculus Quest 2 offers almost everything that you could ask for from a VR headset like an impressive display and refresh rate, easy setup, and portability. Every update also promises to make it even better over time.
