Facebook announced that its long-awaited support for multiple user accounts and device-specific app sharing is heading to Oculus Quest 2 starting next month.
The company says in a developer blog post the upcoming ‘Multi-User’ feature will let you add up to three secondary accounts to a single device. ‘App Sharing’ will additionally give primary account holders the ability to share their library of apps between those secondary local profiles. Shared apps will allow users to maintain separate game progress and their own profile-specific achievements.
Multi-user accounts and App Sharing will land on Oculus Quest 2 first as experimental features in February, and then to the original 2019 Quest at an unspecified later date. Like all new Oculus users, all secondary users on a device must login with Facebook.
The company says at some point in the future its upcoming App Sharing feature will also allow a primary account holder to share apps with three other devices at some point as well. It’s ostensibly aimed at households with more than one Oculus headset, however Facebook hasn’t said how it plans to enforce this.
Furthermore, secondary account holders will be able to buy their own apps and content on a shared device, however they won’t be able to share it with anyone else. Only primary account holders will have the ability to share between its secondary device profiles.
The company says its new features will “help grow the VR community, promote [Oculus Store] apps, and help prevent piracy.” It’s also said to increase household usage, and create “better engagement for the developer long term.”
All new apps submitted to the Oculus Store after February 13th will be required to have App Sharing activated. Developers who published before that date can opt-out of App Sharing, however they have to do so before February 12th, otherwise it’s applied automatically.