We were afraid this might be coming, Oculus’ Rift and HTC’s Vive are slowly dividing the PC’s player base. Between the new Oculus Home that’s tracking user behaviour and the pre-existing Steam client we all know and love. Reddit user “CrossVR” has taken it upon himself to create “Revive” and get a couple Rift games working on Vive units as a proof-of-concept. Lucky’s Tail and Oculus Dream Deck are currently the only games tested, and still require an Xbox controller, but there may be more to come. The hack itself is quite similar to cracking a pirated game as far as I understand it. Specific files key to the game’s runtime are partially rewritten to allow for a different outcome. In this case Oculus Runtimes have been rewritten as OpenVR calls. Revive even got a statement from Oculus on the software stating:

“This is a hack, and we don’t condone it. Users should expect that hacked games won’t work indefinitely, as regular software updates to games, apps, and our platform are likely to break hacked software.”

Now, this makes me think Palmer is backtracking a little bit, when only 4 months ago he said “If customers buy a game from us, I don’t care if they mod it to run on whatever they want. The software we create through Oculus Studios are exclusive to the Oculus platform, not the Rift itself.” (Full quote here).

So what’s going on Palmer? Let’s get the story straight for once. I’ve watched the Oculus empire rise, but now I see it slowly turn away from what it could have been. With all that’ve been happening lately, things are becoming grim. Shipping issues, faulty devices, and general lack of communication. And maybe I say this with a bit of salt, but thanks Palmer, we might not have had the Vive without you. You started the “VR revolution” in your garage, it’s too bad the Vive might finish in first.