Facebook doesn’t have the best of reputations when it comes to VR content. That is rather worrisome for the parent company of the Oculus Rift headset. The social media company finally pulled the Bullet Train game as CPAC. The timing of introducing this new game was not great, to say the very least.
Another PR Disaster for Facebook
Bullet Train is a VR-based action game which lets players fire on virtual payers in a train station. While that concept is not necessarily unique, Facebook introduced it during the recent CPAC event at an unfortunate moment. More specifically, the Conservative Political Action Conference booth included this game. Two weeks prior, 17 people were killed at a Florida high school in Parkland. It is evident bringing this game to such an event was not the smartest move.
Although Bullet Train is a pretty decent game altogether, it is also a bit too realistic for some. Keeping the mass shooting in mind, the general public backlash over this stunt by Facebook is understandable. Moreover, the company took its sweet time to pull this game as well. Not the smart move by Facebook by any means.
The game itself allows players to interact with a wide variety of weapons. This includes guns, grenades, missiles, and so forth. It even provides haptic feedback to players as a way to enhance the experience. While that is a commendable development for the VR industry, it is not something America needs so soon after a major tragedy. Facebook did acknowledge the mistake was entirely their fault and publicly apologized for even showcasing the game.
For the time being, Facebook will continue to suffer from public backlash for some time to come. The game itself will not see any major repercussions because of this development, though. It is not the developers’ fault Facebook decided to showcase a demo at such an unfortunate time. One could also question why Facebook is even present at such events in the first place. Rest assured there will be some juicy debates regarding this topic for quite some time to come.
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