Oculus Rift Developer Kit Arrives at Minecraft Headquarters, Notch Apologizes for Breaking Embargo February 18, 2013 | Posted by Ben Lang | Posted in Featured Slider, News | Comments: 8 Markus “Notch” Persson (left) and Jens “Jeb” Bergensten (right) pose with Oculus Rift developer kits. Mojang, the company that developed everyone’s favorite indie game success story, Minecraft (2011), might be the first in the world to have received the Oculus Rift developer kit. Two weeks back, Oculus Inc. shared the latest on their manufacturing progress. The first Oculus Rift pilot run had been completed which resulted in 40 developer kits. Though Oculus said they still had some changes to make after the pilot run, we speculated that some of those 40 kits would be going out to prominent developers and it seems we may have been right. One of gaming’s most feared foes wears the Oculus Rift The photo above, which shows Markus “Notch” Persson and Jens “Jeb” Bergensten wearing the Oculus Rift developer kits, was reportedly tweeted earlier today by another Mojang employee and taken down shortly thereafter. ‘DullDieHard’, a quick-thinking Reddit user, appears to have saved the image before it was taken down. Notch has formerly said that he’d definitely be making his latest game project, 0x10c, compatible with the VR headset. He’s also said that Minecraft Oculus Rift support is likely. He claims to have backed the Oculus Rift Kickstarter with $10,000, which would mean 33 developer kits for his company, Mojang. I’m doubting that all 33 kits were delivered today along with the two shown above. Rather, these are likely pilot run units which Oculus Inc. sent to Mojang as thanks of their support of the Kickstarter. It’s also possible that Notch didn’t order a full 33 kits, but rather donated some extra cash because he wanted to see the project make it through the Kickstarter. If Mojang ended up with the Rift units from the pilot run, it’s likely that other developers will be receiving them too. If I had to guess, I’d say that the Oculus sent units to the following: Valve / Michael Abrash, Adhesive Games (Hawken), Epic Games, id / John Carmack, Roberts Space Industries (Star Citizen), Cliff Bleszinski, and Unity. Update, 2/19, 9:47 AM: It looks like the reason for the removal of the photo is that Mojang accidentally broke an embargo set by Oculus. Notch acknowledged the mistake just a few hours ago: If we ever received something like the Oculus Rift, we’d probably be stupid enough to tweet pics of it immediately, despite agreeing not to. — Markus Persson (@notch) February 19, 2013 Of course, if that hypothetical situation arose, we’d apologize for it. — Markus Persson (@notch) February 19, 2013 Share this: Facebook Twitter Google +1 Reddit Pinterest StumbleUpon Email Tagged: minecraft, minecraft oculus rift, minecraft virtual reality, mojang oculus rift, oculus rift, oculus rift minecraft, ox10c oculus rift
Andreas Aronsson February 18, 2013 8:37 pm Log in to Reply Saw this. Got me excited. Then I remembered how slow development is on Minecraft nowadays :P or at least it feels that way to me, is anyone else than Jeb actually working on it? O.o In any case I really do wonder if they will get support done before the consumer Rift is released, hehe. I would love to try it, and it could revitalize the game for me… oh, and nice Photoshop, lololol!
Andreas Aronsson February 18, 2013 11:00 pm Log in to Reply Wat? Hate? :D I would never! It’s wonderful to see people who share a passion with me :D (‘shopping Rifts onto any and everything)
Ben Lang February 18, 2013 11:20 pm Log in to Reply Haha, I had to warp the crap out of that photo to get it even close. Not my proudest work.
somenerd February 18, 2013 8:41 pm Log in to Reply That’s actually Jakob Porser, co-founder of Mojang. Jens looks a bit more like this: http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/news2001/38917/pressbild_jeb.jpg And it sounds like the Kickstarter is limited to 10 units.
Ben Lang February 18, 2013 10:21 pm Log in to Reply After careful beard analysis, I’m not convinced that the photo above is of Porser — I couldn’t find any photos of him with long hair and his hair looks quite a bit more dark than the person in the photo. I know that Jeb’s hair looks very orange in that photo, but there are other’s where it matches the picture a bit closer (http://media-mcw.cursecdn.com/c/cd/Jeb_.jpg) Though in this photo, Jeb doesn’t look as tall compared to Notch as we see in the image at the top of the article: http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/01/IMG_1302_2.jpg Looks like we’ve got a genuine mystery on our hands!
Ben Lang February 18, 2013 10:24 pm Log in to Reply Adding to the evidence for Jeb as the one in the photo is that he tweeted to Notch that the Rift had arrived (https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/303439157592727553), while Porser is reportedly the one who posted the photo to twitter, which means it’s likely that he took the photo, rather than being in it. I’m happy to hear alternate hypotheses though ; )!
jessjr February 19, 2013 4:37 am Log in to Reply yeehaa this means we might get some developer videos or summat soon!!!
