Oculus recently opened a referral program that lets U.S. residents generate discount codes for friends, family, or anybody in else that wants to buy a Rift or Go at 10% off. That program proved to be extremely popular, at least for Rift, as the company had to put a temporary hold on Rift referrals due to high demand over the past few days. If you experienced an issue lately sending Rift referrals, Oculus says you can start sending again.
When users tried to generate referral codes for Rift + Touch up until yesterday, they were greeted with this message:
“Your referral couldn’t be sent at this time because we are currently out of referral codes. Please try again later.”
We reached out to the company to understand more, and an Oculus spokesperson said this to Road to VR:
“Due to high demand, we temporarily paused the referral program as our systems caught up. As of today Rift owners can now resume sending referral codes. The original limit of 3 codes per person is still in effect.”
The stoppage was likely due to high demand experienced over the Black Friday & Cyber Monday period which saw Rift go as low as $350 when purchased from Oculus and its retail partners.
With a referral link, that knocked another 10% off the price, bringing it to an all-time low of $315. Rift + Touch is regularly priced at $400, making the deal an obvious target for bargain hunters and their Oculus device pals which saw an Oculus Store credit kickback between $20 – $30 for every Rift/Go referral.
At this time, referrals can only be generated by U.S. based users who have already bought either a Rift or Go. The resultant discount code can be redeemed by anyone living in the company’s 22 supported countries however.
Thanks to Antony Vitillo for tipping us off to the news via his VR/AR publication Skarred Ghost.