![](http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/6/6/5/2/9/3/139583122447.jpg/EG11/resize/405x-1)
I was one of the 9522 people who bought into it, despite my personal scepticism about Kickstarter, a service that offers very little recourse to people who pledge money if things then go sour. For whatever reason, I had $300 that I could bear to part with at the time, I looked at the materials and judged that I would probably get the development kit I was being told would be manufactured, and it all worked out. When my kit turned up some months later and, after a bit of faffing around, I was able to walk around the train station in Half-Life 2 as though I was really there, I had no regrets.
Two years later, Palmer Luckey still talks about how his "foray into virtual reality was driven by a desire to enhance my gaming experience", even as he posts on Reddit explaining that Oculus has sold itself for $2bn to Facebook, a company whose main relationship with games is helping the people who make horrendous ones become extraordinarily rich. I still have no regrets, because I got what I wanted, but the whole episode will be a cautionary tale for anyone who thought Oculus' Kickstarter was more like a pinky-promise to put gaming at the centre of the next generation of virtual reality.
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