Yesterday VRFocus reported on the release of a program named Revive that hacked a small number of exclusive videogames for the Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD). The hack allowed both Lucky’s Tale and Oculus Dreamdeck to be played on the kit’s main PC-based rival, the HTC Vive. It was pretty safe to assume that Oculus VR itself wouldn’t be so happy about the hack given that it paid for the development of these experiences. Now the company has warned against use of the hack, suggesting it might not work indefinitely.
“This is a hack, and we don’t condone it,” Oculus VR said in a statement issued to VRFocus. “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.” While the hack only applies to two titles at the moment, those that shared it online suggested that it might be possible to port other titles to Revive. But would the creators also work to overcome any issues encountered by software updates?
These hacks still require the user to purchase these titles, however, and Lucky’s Tale arrives for free with the Oculus Rift, so many that could try it out will likely own the native HMD anyway. That said, on HTC Vive players can utilise the Room Scale user tracking to stand up and walk around these titles, a feature that isn’t possible with current Oculus VR hardware. That will change with the launch of the Oculus Touch controller, however, which arrives with an extra tracking sensor.
Stay tuned to VRFocus for the latest on both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
