With E3 all wrapped up and the video game world looking forwards to all of the wondrous things (Fallout 4 & Oculus Touch being at the top of my list) that were announced and settling into beautiful dreams of what is to come, it comes as no big surprise that Oculus announcement of the Oculus Store included the words “no porn” (especially given the acquisition by Zuck so long ago); and while that might seem like the company is backing out on it’s previous agreement to keep the platform open, it is my opinion that the exclusion of Adult content -at least on the official curated distribution platform- isn’t necessarily all bad; but it is a bit of a mixed bag. Let me explain.
First of all, though Oculus has decided to forbid pornographic content from being a part of the Oculus Store, the Rift will remain an open device. Meaning that Oculus is not locking down the device in such a way as to make their distribution platform the only place you can do so. In one way that is a good thing, as it means that adult content developed for the Rift will not restricted by any rules that would be imposed if it was curated and developers can make things as perverted and “out there” as people would want them to be. On the other hand it is a bad thing, as it means there will be no hard-standards to abide by for things like making sure a game is running smoothly at a high enough FPS and other “best practices”; and the fact that the number of developers willing to develop for an unofficial distribution method will likely be much smaller than if things were the other way around.

“Our store is not gonna have VR porn on it,” – Brendan Iribe

So what does that mean? Will Oculus Rift Porn be a thing? If so, how big? Will anybody even bother to make adult applications for VR if their customers will have to go outside of official venues in order to make it work?
I think so. Porn has always been a huge motivator in the tech space and virtually everyone I know who has heard of or tried the Rift has asked the question “but will it porn?”; and although it is not quite clear yet just how convoluted the process to access pornographic VR content may or may not be in the future, I don’t imagine it being any more difficult than it is currently. Which is to say that if you have even a modicum of computer knowledge, it isn’t likely to be very hard.

At this point all we can really do is speculate on how this will all pan out and it is nice to have some fresh perspective, so leave a comment letting us know what you think about the decision, and whether or not you see it as a good thing; or something that will ruin VR porn.


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8 Comments

  1. […] Source: Oculus says no porn in store. […]

  2. Why would anyone watch porn on their Facebook account when we all know Facebook tracks and sells every single thing we do on the site?

  3. One of the problems with society today, imo, is that sex is somehow worse than violence.

  4. That’s awful nice of them, giving a market for the competition. Competition is good for the consumer after all.

  5. Yawn. It just means they don’t want to make money off of porn but nothing is stopping anyone else from doing it. Just exactly as we expected.

  6. think they have just lost the VR race to Valve/HTC with this one stupid idea. Porn decides the future tech a lot.

  7. Actually, no change in policy. The oculus rift is an open platform, that can feature any (adult) content. The oculus store though, will not feature porn. So you will have to get your x-rated oculus stuff elsewhere, yet you can. So these news are pretty misleading.

  8. Business plan to alienate the people whom are going to waste money on this?

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