This VR headset will literally kill you if you die in the game

Have you ever watched a dystopian sci-fi movie in which the hero jumps into a virtual world, only to be told “if you die in the game, you die in reality”? Have you ever thought that would be a super cool thing to have in real-life? Probably not, because you’re normal.

Enter Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, who has decided what the world needs right now is a VR headset that will quite literally kill you dead if you die in the game.

The good news is that the headset isn’t currently a real product you can buy, thankfully. However, the concept has been thought out in genuinely scary detail.

In a blog post, Luckey explains that he was inspired by the "SAO Incident," a fictional event in Sword Art Online in which 4,000 players died in real life after becoming trapped in their VR MMORPG. This incident (in the Sword Art Online universe) started on November 6, 2022. Hence Luckey choosing now to unveil his twisted baby to the world.

"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," he wrote. "Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game.

"This is an area of video game mechanics that has never been explored, despite the long history of real-world sports revolving around similar stakes."

In the world of Sword Art Online, the headsets deploy what essentially amounts to microwave-induced brain blast that instantly kills the wearer. Luckey has opted for three explosive charges positioned right on top of the wearer’s forehead, connected to a sensor that means the charges will only go off when the game over screen is detected. This will, in Luckey’s words, “instantly destroy the brain of the user.”

While it’s highly, highly unlikely that such a product would ever see the light of day, even seeing a well thought out concept like this is deeply disturbing.