The Oculus Rift's software platform won't be as open as previously believed and the gates of Home won't allow pornographic content through.
Like Google Play and Valve's Steams and other digital distribution outlet, Oculus Home's content will be curated to a degree, according to Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe.
"We are going to monitor the content and make sure that it fits the policy we put up which is this safe and clean environment that everyone can know, and love, and trust just like other popular app stores," Iribe said to TechCrunch. "You're going to need to be approved first."
About a month ago, Oculus VR Co-Founder Palmer Luckey indicated that sexually explicit content, and any other VR experiences, would be allowed onto the Rift's software platform.
"The rift is an open platform," Luckey said during the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference in San Jose, Calif. last month. "We don't control what software can run on it -- and that's a big deal."
Virtually no one has doubted that porn will make its way onto the Rift and other VR platforms, but Luckey's remarks, which were clearer and more affirmative than the company's other execs, indicated that oculus VR would stand out of the way of such content.
This reporter asked Oculus VR just how open the Home platform will be, but a spokesperson said the company wasn't ready to share more than it had just revealed during its press event. A day later, on Friday, Oculus VR's spokespeople were ready to speak again and told Business Insider the following regarding a question about violence.
"Oculus only distributes developer content that meets their terms of service, but they aren't open to discuss what those terms are at this time," a spokesperson said.
And while the spokesperson said the company isn't ready to discuss its terms of service just yet, it later explicitly stated that pornographic content is forbidden in the Oculus store.
While some developers and consumers may be rubbed the wrong way by the barring of porn on the Rift's store, Oculus VR's stance now appears to be that it refuses to distribute such content. It won't try to stop developers from creating it.
Cyber sex isn't the only reason Oculus VR has decided to curate the content allowed in the Rift's store. The company also wants to make sure it doesn't publish content that makes people sick, as in motion induced sickness.
"Something can be comfortable from a disorientation standpoint, where it doesn't make me feel bad," Iribe said. "It doesn't have crazy locomotion like a roller coaster. But if it is really, really super intense, we do want to give people warnings about that."
