The public response to the news that Facebook would be acquiring Oculus for $2 billion has been, overwhelmingly, negative. So negative, in-fact, that many members of the Oculus team have been receiving death threats over the acquisition. This broadness of the negative sentiment came as a surprise to the Oculus team. In an interview with GameInformer, Oculus Vice President of Product Nate Mitchell  noted that the company expected their existing user base to be upset, but not the general public:

We assumed that the reaction would be negative, especially from our core community…Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. I don’t think we expected it to be so negative. As people begin to digest it a bit and think about it, you can see that Twitter and Reddit is swinging back the opposite direction. The onus is on us to educate people, and we want to share everything we’re doing.¹

Further, as we touched on in our initial article covering the deal, Palmer Luckey – Oculus founder – took to Reddit to answer questions about the deal. Luckey noted the same shock at the overwhelming negative sentiment, as well as the death threats:

We expected a negative reaction from people in the short term, we did not expect to be getting so many death threats and harassing phone calls that extended to our families.

We know we will prove ourselves with actions and not words, but that kind of shit is unwarranted, especially since it is impacting people who have nothing to do with Oculus. ²

Luckey, a bit later added more context to the response:

We expected a kneejerk from reaction from people who don’t have all the information we do, and will not have it for some time. We expected a negative reaction, that does not mean we think the reaction is warranted.

My primary goal is the long term success of VR, not short term warm and fuzzy feelings.³

This is insane. To harass and send death threats because a company agrees to a hefty sum is absurd. Is a massive exit not the goal of the tech industry? Even more, this deal has the potential to make Oculus even better, even more powerful. I am struggling to understand the rage.