Brendan Iribe, one ofOculusVR’s co-founders, is departing the company. Iribe announced Monday morning that he would be moving on to the “next chapter” after spending six years with the popular VR headset manufacturer. While Iribe didn’t provide a reason for leavingOculus, an unverified report claims it’s due to the cancellation of Oculus' Rift 2 VR headset – of which Iribe was leading the development. Iribe has not yet announced his plans going forward.
Iribe’s history in the gaming industry implies that he will likely continue forward with another company. After getting his start working onCivilization 4, Iribe started Scaleform, which focused on PC gaming user interfaces. Scaleform was eventually sold, after which he joined game streaming company Gaikai as a product lead. Gaikai was eventually sold to Sony, and Iribe went back to entrepreneurship, partnering with Palmer Luckey to launch Oculus' Kickstarter in 2012.
His history with Oculus is well-recorded, with Iribe taking on the position of CEO following the VR headset’s successful Kickstarter. Iribe sustained that position even through Oculus' eventualsale to Facebook, only to step down in 2016 and take up the role leading the PC VR group. It’s this position that Iribe will be leaving.
While Iribe’s resignation may be quite a surprise given his dedication to Oculus and its future on PC, it’s ultimately just the latest in a string of high profile departures from Facebook. Oculus co-founderPalmer Luckey left in 2017, the WhatsApp co-founders also left in 2017, and more recently, Facebook has lost its chief marketing officer, vice president of partnerships, communications chief, chief security officer, and general counsel. Needless to say, Facebook is going through quite a bit of turmoil right now.
Whether or not that turmoil is directly related to Iribe leaving Oculus and Facebook is unclear. The unverified reports regarding the cancellation of the Rift 2 claim that there have been tumultuous shake-ups over the past week, as Facebook redirected its focus elsewhere. For context, Facebook’s recent VR offerings have focused on lower-end cell phone VR andstandalone affordable headsetswith lower end technology compared to the Rift headset.
With this departure, both Iribe andOculus' future are for now unclear.
