Oculus is picking a fight with developers and fans it has no chance of winning

When exclusivity goes wrong … and opens the door to piracy

By Ben Kuchera

The very small, and often very excitable, world of virtual reality was in an uproar last week when Oculus VR released a software update that broke a third-party program that allowed Rift games to be played on the HTC Vive. “Our latest software update included several new features, bug fixes and security upgrades, including an update to our entitlement check that we added to curb piracy and protect games and apps that developers have worked so hard to make,” Oculus told Polygon. “This update wasn’t targeted at a specific hack.”

We were told this was coming. “When we first learned about hacks that modify our software to interfere with the security, functionality and integrity of the Oculus ecosystem, and allow games to run outside the scope of our QA, testing and support, we immediately notified the community that we will not be supporting or maintaining the long term usability or quality of hacked software,” Oculus said.

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