By: Nick Gambino
Facebook continues its world conquest with the announcement that they’re acquiring VR game developer Downpour Interactive. The company is responsible for the popular VR shooter Onward.
“We’ve seen great success with Onward on the Oculus platform for several years—first on Rift and more recently on Quest,” Facebook VP of AR/VR Content, Mike Verdu said in the company’s blog post. “Becoming part of the Oculus Studios family will give Downpour Interactive the opportunity to cultivate both the Onward community with the full support of Oculus Studios resources and, in the future, pursue other projects.”
The blog post acts as a Q&A or FAQ of sorts assuaging any concerns Onward fans might have about the company transitioning under a tech conglomerate that eats worlds. The plan is to have the entire Downpour team move under Oculus Studios to work on Onward updates and other future projects.
I think the biggest question fans want answered is whether the popular shooter will be removed from other VR platforms and become an Oculus exclusive. Verdu tells us that the game will continue on other platforms. It’s the shortest and least verbose answer in the blog post, so we’ll have to see if that changes sometime in the future.
Downpour Studios has created its own set of FAQs to clue fans into what the company will look like going forward. The CEO, Dante Buckley, claims that Downpour will retain full control of all development.
“With us joining Oculus Studios at Facebook, we can now realize Onward’s full vision with tremendous support and resources,” Buckley said in a post on the Onward website. “This means a better game for all our players on all platforms. There are no changes in hierarchy or in vision, everyone at Downpour is still working hard to deliver you the best game possible.”
It seems the only real change is the resources now available to Downpour. In other words, they have access to a lot more capital to rev up their plans to deliver a fully immersive teamwork-based first-person shooter. I don’t hate that.
I only hope they are allowed to retain their autonomy and not get sucked into the cogs of the goliath that is the Facebook machine.
