Meta drops mandatory Facebook login for VR headsets

Today, Meta has announced that you will no longer need a Facebook account to log in to your Meta VR Devices like the Quest 2 by introducing “Meta Accounts”, due to roll out in August 2022.

For a good long time now, VR enthusiasts have expressed their dismay at the fact that they have had to make a Facebook account to log in to their VR devices. However, now Meta is looking to change all of this with the introduction of Meta Accounts, which will function as a new social profile for everything Meta-related. This includes your Instagram and Facebook accounts.

They plan on shifting their “Friends” over to “followers” in a similar way to how Instagram currently operates, which is yet another Meta-owned property. You’ll have until January 1st, 2023 to switch your Oculus account over to a Meta account and Meta Horizon Profile, which Oculus announced on its blog. Sporting enhanced security controls to help VR become a more welcoming experience to the masses, you can easily see how this eventually all converges into a “metaverse”, combining all of your social accounts, and integrating them into their wider ecosystem of products.

Luckily, the addition of Instagram and Facebook is optional, so they will not be mandatory to log in, and you won’t have to have a Facebook account to log in to their new portal from August of 2022, according to a recent press release from the company, alongside a post from Mark Zuckerberg.

With that looming threat of an impending metaverse behind us, it should make things a little bit easier for those who might want to pick up an Oculus headset, which is one of the best VR headsets you can currently purchase, without having to shell out for an additional PC.

We’re currently expecting to see more from Meta on the VR front later this year with Project Cambria.