Facebook and its virtual reality subsidiary Oculus released the hotly-anticipated Quest 2 VR headset a few weeks ago, and like its predecessor, the new hardware has been a sales hit. But unlike the original Quest, the new model has been mired in controversies since it was initially announced. Facebook’s decision to require a Facebook account for all Oculus users has been unpopular with the headset’s core audience. The Quest 2 typically needs a Facebook login to work properly, but a group of hackers is looking to change that with an unreleased jailbreak for the headset.
Hacktivist non-profit Extended Reality Safety Initiative, or XRSI, announced on its blog ReadyHackerOne that the group had achieved root access on the Oculus Quest 2, allowing it to bypass the Facebook login during the setup process. According to founder Kavya Pearlman, the group is “currently working to gather assurances to protect the individuals who discovered these methods of jailbreak.” To phrase it differently, Facebook will probably seek legal action against anyone that releases exploits for its hardware, and the XRSI is preparing for that possibility.
Facebook’s mandatory requirement for Oculus users to migrate to Facebook accounts has been problematic. Fans have reported that the new system could cause them to lose their Oculus purchases after moving to the Facebook system and deleting that Facebook account, and while the company has given three years’ notice for existing owners, new fans will have to deal with signing up through Facebook’s system and keeping the account active. Otherwise, they won’t be able to use the $300 headset at all.
Players have also said that having multiple headsets attached to a single account could cause bans from Oculus, though Facebook has denied the issue. The jailbreak could be a solution to these problems, if a temporary one. It’s likely that the company will take a page from Apple’s playlist and try to patch out openings in the Oculus software as new exploits appear. The XRSI cites right-to-repair laws as justification for releasing the jailbreak on the Quest 2, which would let owners modify and fix the hardware and software on the hardware as they see fit.
Indeed, the company’s hamfisted approach to integrating Oculus with the rest of Facebook at large seems to be the darkest stain on what otherwise appears to be a great entry-level VR headset. Reviews for the Quest 2 cited the cheaper price, streamlined design and hardware improvements as reasons why the headset was worth a look. But most of the news on the headset since then has focused on Facebook trying, and failing, to impose its influence on a piece of hardware that could easily stand on its own.
Fans of services like Whatsapp and Instagram have had to watch as the identities of those apps slowly fell to the wayside in favor of what the parent company demands for them, and it seems that Oculus is getting its own variation of that. In a way, the existence of a jailbreak for the Quest 2 hints at what fans have always wanted out of Oculus’s products: a good headset that works the way the player wants it to, and not the other way around.
Source: DualShockers
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