Keynote includes $10 million pledge toward diversity-minded initiatives... but no Luckey.

Oculus' annual conference revolving around its VR products just happened to be scheduled two weeks after the company's founder, Palmer Luckey, was revealed as a major contributor to a "shit-posting" political meme organization. Coincidentally, this third edition of Oculus Connect began with a major no-show on its keynote stage: Palmer Luckey.

Luckey could have used the Oculus Connect stage to address the controversy over his donations to Nimble America, which my Ars UK colleagues so succinctly described in September as "an unofficial pro-Trump political nonprofit that is powering the tsunami of white supremacist and other racist image macros that have plagued Reddit." Instead, Oculus gave a few minutes of stage time to Ebony Peay Ramirez, the company's head of diversity, who announced that Oculus will commit $10 million to "diverse programs for virtual reality."

"VR will only succeed if it reflects a diverse ecosystem," Ramirez said to the Oculus Connect crowd. "Diversity matters, not just in the storytellers lending their voices to the medium but to the audience as well." Ramirez described a variety of Oculus-run initiatives, including VR For Good, Launch Pad, and The Diverse Filmmakers Project, to offer access and assistance for more diverse VR creators. However, she frequently stumbled over her words throughout her speech, even when asking, "Can I hear it from the women in VR, please?"

Ramirez's choice to focus heavily on the diversity-minded efforts of Launch Pad is curious, especially since participants from that program wrote comments in opposition to Luckey's financial contributions. Some of those participants expressed disappointment with Luckey's sole response after his donations were made public, in which he clarified that his actions were his own and "do not represent Oculus."

Luckey has yet to make any statements about hiring, diversity, or developer-support initiatives since the September story broke.

Oculus may have reached particularly far to find a way to fill a time slot on the Connect conference keynote stage on Thursday. "I should be laying in bed," Oculus chief scientist Michael Abrash told the crowd during the keynote's closing speech. He then clarified that he was sick and hoped someone would bring him tea. Abrash spoke at length about the platform's developmental future, including expectations for wider fields of view and the blending of "augmented reality" content in future VR headsets.