Skip to main content

Oculus to give free, special edition headsets to early Kickstarter backers

Were you one of the 6,955 early backers of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign, who pledged enough for a DK1? If so, Oculus has a special announcement (that is of course in no way designed to disrupt the HTC Vive Pre debut): You’re getting a free “Kickstarter edition,” of the Oculus Rift CV1.

The announcement was made on the Oculus Kickstarter page, which although much less commonly updated, has continued to exist over the past few years, despite the company’s buyout by Facebook and move away from original financing plans. This announcement was a big one though, and saw the developers, founders, and executives coming forward to issue a big thank you to the original backers. Without them, none of this would have been possible.

“On August 1, 2012, we launched a Kickstarter campaign to seed the development of a groundbreaking virtual reality headset – Oculus Rift. Tomorrow, we’ll be opening Rift pre-orders on Oculus.com,” begins the address, waxing lyrically about how far Oculus and consumer grade virtual reality has come in just a few short years.

“As a small token of our appreciation for your support, all Kickstarter backers who pledged for a Rift development kit will get a free Kickstarter Edition Oculus Rift!”

It’s not clear at this time how much, if at all, the “Kickstarter Edition” of the Oculus Rift CV1 will differ from the standard edition that we will all get a chance to pre-order on January 6, but we do know that it will come with the free bundled games that everyone else is getting: Lucky’s Tale and EVE: Valkyrie.

This announcement comes a day before the official pre-orders go live for the Oculus Rift consumer edition, though there are many details yet to be announced, including the final price, accessory list, and an eventual release date of the Oculus Touch — though we do know the motion controls will debut sometime in the second half of the year.

Were you one of the early Kickstarter backers? If not, do you have your card standing by for when the pre-orders go live tomorrow? We sure do.

Editors' Recommendations

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
AMD’s upcoming APUs might destroy your GPU
AMD CEO Lisa Su holding an APU chip.

The spec sheets for AMD's upcoming APU lineups, dubbed Strix Point and Strix Halo, have just been leaked, and it's safe to say that they're looking pretty impressive. Equipped with Zen 5 cores, the new APUs will find their way to laptops that are meant to be on the thinner side, but their performance might rival that of some of the best budget graphics cards -- and that's without having a discrete GPU.

While AMD hasn't unveiled Strix Point (STX) and Strix Halo (STX Halo) specs just yet, they were leaked by HKEPC and then shared by VideoCardz. The sheet goes over the maximum specs for each APU lineup, the first of which, Strix Point, is rumored to launch this year. Strix Halo, said to be significantly more powerful, is currently slated for a 2025 release.

Read more
Hyte made me fall in love with my gaming PC all over again
A PC built with the Hyte Nexus Link ecosystem.

I've never seen anything quite like Hyte's new Nexus Link ecosystem. Corsair has its iCue Link system, and Lian Li has its magnetic Uni system, and all three companies are now offering ways to tie together your PC cooling and lighting devoid of extraneous cables. But Hyte's marriage of hardware, software, and accessories is in a league of its own -- and it transformed my PC build completely.

I've been using some of the foundational components of the ecosystem for about a week, retailoring a build inside of Hyte's own Y40 PC case to see how the system works. It doesn't seem too exciting at first -- Hyte released an all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler, some fans, and a few RGB strips, who cares? But as I engaged more with the Nexus Link ecosystem, I only became more impressed.
It all starts with the cooler

Read more
How to delete your Spotify account on desktop and mobile
An iPhone with the Stats for Spotify screen on it being held in a hand.

Spotify is home to a bountiful trove of music. With over 615 million users connected to the platform, it’s no wonder it’s one of the biggest music-streaming platforms in town. Still, sometimes we need to put aside a little extra pocket change every month. And one of the first things to go are monthly subscriptions. We know it stinks, but this doesn’t mean your Spotify account needs to disappear forever.

Read more