Why Notch thinks Facebook is ‘creepy’

Even Markus 'Notch' Persson admits "virtual reality is going to change the world." It's part of the reason he was in talks to bring Minecraft — albeit a scaled down version of it — to the Oculus Rift. Of course, last night, in the wake of Facebook purchasing Oculus VR for $2 billion, this all changed. He canceled the deal

Virtual reality still may change the world, but Notch is "creeped out" over Facebook's intentions. Adding some clarification to his initial tweet, Notch posted a lengthy explanation on his blog. He wrote:

Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts. Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers. People have made games for Facebook platforms before, and while it worked great for a while, they were stuck in a very unfortunate position when Facebook eventually changed the platform to better fit the social experience they were trying to build.

Don’t get me wrong, VR is not bad for social. In fact, I think social could become one of the biggest applications of VR. Being able to sit in a virtual living room and see your friend’s avatar? Business meetings? Virtual cinemas where you feel like you’re actually watching the movie with your friend who is seven time zones away?

But I don’t want to work with social, I want to work with games.

Notch added that he "definitely" still wants to be a part of VR, but refuses to work with Facebook. He claims their motives are "too unclear and shifting, and they haven't historically been a stable platform."

"There's nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me," he said. Before closing out the post, Notch added "And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition."