'Facebook creeps me out,' Notch ends Minecraft for Oculus Rift [Update]

Those eager to cobble together monumental structures in virtual reality will be sad to hear that Minecraft is no longer likely to be developed for the Oculus Rift officially.

In August we reported on a series of tweets from Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson in which the developer stated that he was "VERY excited" by the potential of the Oculus Rift headset. Now that Facebook has acquired Oculus Rift, Persson is singing a different, decidedly unhappy tune. "We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus," Persson tweeted. "I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out."

We've reached out to Persson for more information on why exactly the social networking giant creeps him out. In the meantime, those especially hard up for some blocky virtual world building may want to take a look at Minecrift, a Minecraft modification that adds Oculus Rift support to the existing version of Mojang's indie hit.

Update: In lieu of responding directly to press inquiries, Persson has posted a lengthy explanation of his issues with Facebook which we've quoted in part below.

"Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts" Persson wrote. "Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers. People have made games for Facebook platforms before, and while it worked great for a while, they were stuck in a very unfortunate position when Facebook eventually changed the platform to better fit the social experience they were trying to build."

"Don't get me wrong, VR is not bad for social," he added. "In fact, I think social could become one of the biggest applications of VR. Being able to sit in a virtual living room and see your friend's avatar? Business meetings? Virtual cinemas where you feel like you're actually watching the movie with your friend who is seven time zones away?"

"But I don't want to work with social, I want to work with games."

[Image: Mojang]