Oculus VR Games on HTC Vive Update: 'Hacked Games' Won't Work Indefinitely, Warns Oculus

By Juvy Garcia, Christian Post Contributor Saturday, April 16, 2016

Recently, it was reported that a certain program called Revive made possible playing Oculus Rift-"exclusive" games on Valve and HTC's virtual reality headset, the Vive. However, shortly after such reports came out, Oculus has issued a statement warning those taking advantage of Revive that the patch will not work indefinitely.

In the statement, Oculus labels the patch as a "hack" and warns users that future software updates will most likely remove their currently enjoyed privileges. In other words, the company will soon be removing such compatibility between the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

"This is a hack, and we don't condone it," Oculus said in a statement provided to website Ars Technica on Thursday, April 14. "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."

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Reddit user CrossVR created Revive and shared the files at github. The patch allowed HTC Vive users to play two Oculus Rift-"exclusive" titles, namely "Lucky's Tale" and "Oculus Dreamdeck." In addition to these games, other users reported the patch also worked with "Chronos" and games that use Unity and Unreal engines.

The Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive both need a PC to work. However, Oculus has been pushing for exclusivity in terms of games and apps in a bid to entice more consumers to buy its product. Valve and HTC, on the other hand, have decided to go the other way, providing the documentation in its OpenVR APIs as freely available to anyone who wants to use them.

For his part, CrossVR said Oculus' response to Revive was "perfectly fine." He states further that it doesn't mean the company will be actively trying to prohibit the patch, though neither will Oculus support it. The patch creator explains that since Revive is out of Oculus' control, the company didn't want consumers to expect the games for Oculus Rift to work with VR headsets from another company.