Thousands of Facebook’s Oculus Controllers Set to Ship with Rift S and Quest Will Have Creepy Easter Egg Messages Inside… By Accident!
Nate Mitchell, cofounder of Oculus and head of the VR project at Facebook announced today that there were some accidental “easter eggs” placed in Oculus controllers that are set to ship out with upcoming Rift S and Quest systems. The messages were jokes placed by designers and never intended to actually be manufactured, but as it turns out, if you break open your controllers, you may be one of the lucky ones to find a cable inside with a hidden message! OOPS!
Unfortunately, some “easter egg” labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers. [1/3]
— Nate Mitchell (@natemitchell) April 12, 2019
The messages include gems like “This Space for Rent”, “The Masons Were Here”, and “Big Brother is Watching”. A particularly clever, “Hi iFixit! We see you!” was also included. These were intended to be internal hijinx that accidentally ended up on the factory floor. Facebook has no intentions to recall these devices. They have also indicated that the hardware of the actual products has not been compromised.
Facebook representative, Johanna Peace, quoted in an email to Business Insider, “To be clear, no devices have been sold with these messages yet, since Quest and Rift S have not yet shipped. That said, as mentioned in Nate’s tweet, the messages will be inside tens of thousands of controller pairs that will ship to consumers when Quest and Rift S ship. We think it’s important to be transparent with our community and take responsibility when there’s an error.”
Some are very amused by the incident, others find it a bit too bleak, given Facebook’s ongoing struggles with privacy concerns. In either case, the products will be hitting the market and unless people break open their controllers, there is no way of knowing in the immediate future. We’re watching you, iFixit.