Is it even legal? Oculus creator builds VR headset that can actually kill you if you die in-game

In what appears to be an elaborate, if cruel, joke, the founder of virtual reality company Oculuss claimed he is designing a VR headset that can actually kill the player who loses, or gets 'killed' in gaming parlance, during a video game.

In a blog post, Palmer Luckey who left Oculus VR after it was acquired by Facebook some years ago, said he was inspired by the Japanese novel series-turned-anime 'Sword Art Online'. In it, players are entrapped in an online role-playing game where death in the game implies death in the real world due to the lethal "NerveGear" headset they wear.

“The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me — you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it,” Luckey said.

If Sword Art Online players who use these headsets andfail to escape a mad scientist's trap, will experience microwave-induced brain melt. When it comes to Luckey's headgear, things get bloodier since he says it uses charge modules to blow someone's skull up.

Based on a research by Jorden Lowen from 2018 that was based on the analysis of a few VR games, modern virtual reality technology has the potential to alter how people feel about video games by inducing out-of-body experiences.

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In the past, many scholars have also questioned the impact of new media and technology on how we perceive mortality, embodiment, and subjectivity.

Although the Luckey VR headgear is not yet for sale, it will be intriguing to observe how it develops and how people respond.

Several observers said the blog post is likely a joke, even as one wonders it will be legal to design, let alone sell, such a headset.

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