Your Oculus Quest 2 no longer needs Facebook thanks to a 17-year-old hacker

Be free of the shackles of Facebook at the expense of some replaceable features

An ingenious 17-year-old coder who goes by the name of Bastian has found a way to remove Facebook from the Oculus Quest 2, meaning outages like the one experienced earlier this week won’t affect the VR headset.

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were all down earlier this week, disrupting work and communication for many. The service failure also had the knock-on effect of making VR games on the Oculus Quest 2 completely unplayable, as the headset requires users to log in to a Facebook account to access the titles.

The Oculus is a £300 piece of equipment, but it becomes little more than a paper weight when Facebook is down. Thanks to Bastian, you can now remove the requirement that your headset be connected to your Facebook account by loading a piece of software called Oculess onto the hardware while it is in developer mode.

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Bastian has uploaded a YouTube tutorial video that breaks the process down step by step, so even without any knowledge of computers, you can uninstall Facebook.

This does come with some small caveats, however. Bastian has explained that several features will be unavailable once you unlink your Facebook account. These include: the Oculus store, Facebook social media features, most apps downloaded through the Oculus store, casting, Oculus browser, Oculus TV, and the ability to launch Oculus apps through the built-in app launcher.

Fortunately, there are several pieces of software you can use instead to replace these features, such as Quest app launcher, SidequestVR, and Firefox reality.

Some Oculus Quest 2s have been voluntarily recalled due to reports of skin irritation caused by the foam on the headset. Facebook also trialled targeted adverts within Oculus VR games earlier this year, but Blaston, the first game to sign up for the test, quickly reversed course after player backlash.

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