(Bloomberg) -- Tens of thousands of Facebook Inc.'s Oculus users will receive a cryptic message within their Touch controllers: “The Masons Were Here” or “This Space For Rent.”
Some development kits will even come with the tag, “Big Brother is Watching,” though these are in non-consumer units.
Oculus Co-Founder Nate Mitchell, who heads virtual reality products at the social media giant, said in a tweet Friday that the “inappropriate” messages were added to prototypes and accidentally made their way into the internal hardware of the controllers. The labels were meant as an "Easter egg," a broadly-used practice where developers put messages or an inside joke hidden in their products.
Although Mitchell said the issue has been fixed, the affected controllers will be eventually shipped to consumers “this spring” as the company doesn't plan to recall them, Facebook representative Johanna Peace said in an e-mailed message.
“The integrity and functionality of the hardware were not compromised, and we've fixed our process so this won't happen again,” Mitchell said in a separate tweet.
To contact the reporter on this story: Maria Jose Valero in New York at mvalero3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Clementine Fletcher at cfletcher5@bloomberg.net, Linus Chua, James Ludden
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