Oculus Quest 2 Secondary Accounts, App Sharing Have Lots Of Caveats
Oculus fans' fears finally came true when Facebook announced that the Oculus Quest 2 would require a Facebook account to even use. That hard requirement had very significant and mostly negative implications and it seems that those will continue despite the mounting criticism and backlash. That said, the Oculus Quest 2 also came with limitations not directly related to Facebook accounts and while some of those will soon be removed, the implementation might leave users, especially families, scratching their heads in confusion.
As it stands, the Oculus Quest 2 is limited to using one and only one Facebook account which makes sharing the device with family or friends tedious and unsafe. While there is nothing technically or physically preventing younger users from enjoying Oculus' VR experiences, the platform to this date has no parental controls whatsoever. Oculus will be changing that on the Quest 2, first as an experiment before a wider rollout, but, as they say, the devil is in the details.
A single Oculus Quest 2 device will soon be able to support up to three other secondary accounts for a total of four. Additionally, the primary account holder will be able to share apps they purchased to those secondary accounts, which is how Oculus thinks parents will be able to control what their kids can use. However, secondary accounts can actually also make purchases on the shared device but those won't be able to share their apps with the primary account.
The Oculus Quest 2 will also support app sharing between different devices but that, too, is rather complicated. It requires that a primary account also be logged in to those other devices to share apps with secondary accounts there. Oculus notes that when secondary accounts get their own devices and become primary accounts, they will no longer have access to shared apps.
While Oculus is positioning these new features as a way for family members to share the same VR device, it seems to ignore one important aspect. All those secondary accounts still need to be Facebook accounts, which means that kids younger than 13 years of age still can't have their own separate accounts. Some might argue that they would be too young to use the Oculus Quest 2 anyway but the restriction could also tempt some families to create Facebook accounts for kids that lie about their age.