Modders already breaking Oculus exclusivity (updated- June 24th 2016)

[Anult]

Just a heads up, the guy who created Revive has brought out an update that bypasses the DRM somewhat:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4kd88y/revive_052_released_bypasses_drm_in_oculus/

 

The cat and mouse game has turned up a notch and I personally wouldn't be surprised if more freelancers come into the scene in order to join the DRM cat and mouse game going on with the rift.

[Energycore]

The PC Community be like fight me.

 

And here I thought I'd be able to play Eve Valkyrie on the Vive.

 

Maybe later.

[Humbug]

11 minutes ago, Energycore said:

The PC Community be like fight me.

 

And here I thought I'd be able to play Eve Valkyrie on the Vive.

 

Maybe later.

Eve Valkyrie has already announced HTC Vive support coming soon.

 

No mods will be required.

[Energycore]

4 hours ago, Humbug said:

Eve Valkyrie has already announced HTC Vive support coming soon.

 

No mods will be required.

 

Aw yeah.

[suicidalfranco]

9 hours ago, Pintend said:

Just a heads up, the guy who created Revive has brought out an update that bypasses the DRM somewhat:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4kd88y/revive_052_released_bypasses_drm_in_oculus/

 

The cat and mouse game has turned up a notch and I personally wouldn't be surprised if more freelancers come into the scene in order to join the DRM cat and mouse game going on with the rift.

now let's wait for facebook to break this too 

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, suicidalfranco said:

now let's wait for facebook to break this too 

That's the thing: they probably can't push em fast enough. The thing about DRM is that it is almost always on one end of the spectrum: Useless or Draconianly obtrusive. 

 

So unless they implement something like always-online DRM or Fuck-you-we-are-basically-infecting-you-with-malware DRM (a.k.a. Starforce back in the day) and alienate potential consumers even more they'll just shoot themselves in the foot.

[Humbug]

This has become a massive PR disaster for facebook / Oculus.

Below are discussions on the Oculus subreddit, remember this is a community which strongly supports the Rift. A community which always talks up the Rift hardware over the Vive.

Threads about cancelled orders because of this, and about fears that facebook is trying to enforce a console style hardware based platform war on PC.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4kd9tw/new_revive_update_circumvents_new_oculus_drm/

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4kdok0/im_officially_done_with_oculus_and_listed_my_rift/

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4kdu47/last_straw_damn_near_broken/

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4kcixs/oculus_being_oculus/

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4kazlm/oculus_garden/

 

They need to do find a way to address this and calm down their community, Sakkura earlier talked about their communication issues and they seem to have made another PR blunder. Pissing off the Vive fanboys is one thing, but when you are pissing off your own fanboys at the same time it's a bad sign.

[Sakkura]

5 hours ago, Humbug said:

This has become a massive PR disaster for facebook / Oculus.

Below are discussions on the Oculus subreddit, remember this is a community which strongly supports the Rift.

 

Definitely a PR disaster. But I'm going to disagree about the Oculus subreddit, it's not that positive about the Rift. It's still somewhat the default VR subreddit, and additionally gets "brigaded" by Vive fans, so it's very divided on supporting or criticizing Oculus or the Rift itself. The smaller Vive subreddit is generally much more unified in support of "their" VR headset.

[Humbug]

15/6/2016- Update- Croteam accuses Facebook/Oculus of trying to bribe them

 

Independent Croatian developer Croteam best known for Serious Sam and Talos Principle has accused Facebook of trying to buy exclusivity of their upcoming VR Serious Sam game.

 

Posting on reddit in response to an ongoing discussion Croteam employee Mario Kotlar said the following
 

Quote

 

They tried to buy Serious Sam VR as well. It wasn't easy, but we turned down a shitton of money, as we believe that truly good games will sell by themselves and make profit in the long run regardless. And also because we hate exclusives as much as you do.

 

we love oculus guys since they provided hardware and lot of support to us and we look forward to releasing the game on oculus as well. I can't discuss details.

 

We did get support and headsets from Valve as well, but oculus support actually came sooner.

 

Our goal is to release to as many platforms as possible and that includes oculus store as well.

 

We were financially forced to take said exclusives in the past and we hate ourselves for it as this is always bad for both the game and the consumer.

 

I don't feel oculus as our negotiating partner was damaged in any way by my disclosure, as I avoided to mention any details that could so that, such as the amount. I would hope any future negotiating party wouldn't have reason to believe we would disclose anything that would damage them and hence our relationship with them.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4nxpnq/fuck_facebook_and_fuck_oculus/d480x6v?context=3

[Gullerback]

kudos to Croteam for blowing up Oculus like that.  Thats some scummy stuff..  Dropping sacks of cash at developers feet for exclusivity after they just went on some cross platform rant

[Sparviero]

This really seems like much about nothing. People greatly disliked steam when it first arrived. Oculus wants to bankroll titles and make their platform a desired choice. They where not locking out serious Sam indefinitely per another dev post. Just money to make people go with oculus. The dev team just used this latest internet circle jerk for free advertising. 

 

congrats everyone getting upset and siding with this dev. He is laughing all the way to the bank with your money.

[Humbug]

4 hours ago, Sparviero said:

This really seems like much about nothing.

If you are ok with this practice that's your choice. But what they were offered was money in exchange for being a timed exclusive which would block support for other stores and other headsets for the first few months. Apart from the dev who originally posted below is a follow up post from the Croteam CEO. 

 

“I want to clarify some of the inaccuracies about our relationship with Oculus. Oculus did approach us with an offer to help fund the completion of Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope in exchange for launching first on the Oculus Store and keeping it time-limited exclusive. Their offer was to help us accelerate development of our game, with the expectation that it would eventually support all PC VR platforms. We looked at the offer and decided it wasn’t right for our team. At no time did Oculus ask for, or did we discuss total exclusivity or buyout of support from Vive. We look forward to supporting Rift and Vive.”

 

Obviously Oculus has now contacted them and agreed to do some PR damage control hence the above more polite post. But what has happened is clear and is not being denied. And people are not happy about this practice of offering money to devs whose games are already in development in exchange for exclusivity

 

 

[Humbug]

4 hours ago, Sparviero said:

People greatly disliked steam when it first arrived. Oculus wants to bankroll titles and make their platform a desired choice. They where not locking out serious Sam indefinitely per another dev post. Just money to make people go with oculus.

Nobody has a problem with Oculus selling the game via their store. Good for them. People have a problem with the practice of paying money to 3rd party devs to keep it away from other stores and other hardware, regardless of whether it is timed or permanent exclusive. Because this practice is not normal in the PC gaming industry. Origin/steam/gog/uplay etc do not try to block 3rd party devs from selling on other stores. There was a similar outrage when Microsoft paid money to have Rise of the Tomb Raider be a Xbox timed exclusive.

[zMeul]

@Humbug

update on the update: http://uploadvr.com/oculus-denies-seeking-exclusivity-serious-sam-croteam-responds/

Oculus issued a statement

Quote

We regularly offer developers financial grants to help fund early development of new titles to accelerate development or expand the scope of the game. In some cases, we exchange funding in return for launching on the Oculus Store first, with the expectation that the game will go on to launch on other platforms. In the case of Croteam, at no time did we request that they stop development for other platforms, and we look forward to seeing Serious Sam be successful across the entire VR ecosystem.

 

Croteam CTO, Alen Ladavac:

Quote

Ok, Mario [Kotlar], you’ve had fun here, now let’s get serious.
I want to clarify some of the inaccuracies about our relationship with Oculus. Oculus did approach us with an offer to help fund the completion of Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope in exchange for launching first on the Oculus Store and keeping it time-limited exclusive. Their offer was to help us accelerate development of our game, with the expectation that it would eventually support all PC VR platforms. We looked at the offer and decided it wasn’t right for our team. At no time did Oculus ask for, or did we discuss total exclusivity or buyout of support from Vive. We look forward to supporting Rift and Vive.

 

[Gullerback]

6 hours ago, Humbug said:

 There was a similar outrage when Microsoft paid money to have Rise of the Tomb Raider be a Xbox timed exclusive.

 

And that turned out so well =p The sales are abysmal 

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Gullerback said:

And that turned out so well =p The sales are abysmal 

It's something like 3% of the total PC players play on the Windows Store version. 97% waited for Steam! 

[Humbug]

4 hours ago, zMeul said:

Oculus issued a statement

Yep I know, I posted the croteam CEO's statement.

So basically what everyone knew they are now admitting; that they do go around offering money to the devs of ongoing VR projects in exchange for delaying the release on other stores and other hardware.

 

It's hilarious in their statement Oculus avoids using the word 'exclusive' and tries to dress it up as something good.

 

56 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

It's something like 3% of the total PC players play on the Windows Store version. 97% waited for Steam! 

Just curious- how did you get those numbers?

[zMeul]

56 minutes ago, Humbug said:

Just curious- how did you get those numbers?

I heard this too, The Know was it .. I think

[Sparviero]

Origin as a bastion of competitiveness? Lol

[Master Disaster]

5 hours ago, Humbug said:

Yep I know, I posted the croteam CEO's statement.

So basically what everyone knew they are now admitting; that they do go around offering money to the devs of ongoing VR projects in exchange for delaying the release on other stores and other hardware.

 

It's hilarious in their statement Oculus avoids using the word 'exclusive' and tries to dress it up as something good.

 

Just curious- how did you get those numbers?

It was from The Know on YouTube. 

[Humbug]

24/6/2016- Update- Oculus patches out hardware drm after it was broken

 

In a surprise move the latest Oculus runtime patch has removed the hardware drm component which checked for the physical presence of an Oculus certified headset. The move comes just  one month after the hardware drm feature was introduced (something unfamiliar to PC users). The introduction of the hardware drm had forced the hand of the Revive mod author into bypassing the drm which inadvertently paved the way for potential piracy of games from the Oculus Store (although that was not his intention).

 

The creator of the Revive mod has offered an olive branch and graciously thanked Oculus for the latest move

Quote

I'd like to thank Oculus for this decision, now the efforts aimed towards compatibility do not help the efforts towards piracy.

Note that the dashboard application still has some problems for some people, so if the dashboard is empty you can follow the instructions for "Standalone games" instead.
UPDATE: I'm getting reports from multiple users that the headset check is indeed removed. I don't think they changed their stance on exclusivity, but they're at least willing to meet us halfway by letting us mod our games.
I'm delighted to see this change and I hope it can generate a lot of goodwill for Oculus.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4pm2uc/revive_062_released_oculus_removes_headset_check/

 

So there are two possible reasons for the backtracking here by Oculus

-they have heard the community outcry, bad PR etc and decided to backtrack on their policy of fighting against compatibility mods

OR

-they simply removed the feature because they realized it had been quickly bypassed and hence served no purpose and was only hurting them

 

There are those amongst the PC community who were willing to grudgingly accept the fact that facebook was paying money to 3rd party devs to keep games away from competing storefronts such as Steam. But when it was taken a step further into the realm of hardware drm to lock out Vive users the criticism became unanimous.

 

In an interview with Gamespot Oculus's Anna Sweet clarified the reason why they went after the mod despite earlier promises not to fight the mod community.

Quote

Palmer’s original statements were more focused on individual customers, who buy a piece of content and they choose to mod it, I think that's separate from a systemic, platform-wide pack that rips out protections for developers on their content. I think we're really focused on shipping a really good platform and making sure developers ship really great content to customers, and that's where we're focusing our efforts.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-defends-exclusives-launch-and-drm-controver/1100-6441153/

So their official stance is that they don't have a problem with game specific mods which are not distributed. But this mod is different because it's a 'platform' wide mod which has the potential to make all Oculus games compatible with other HMDs.

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, Humbug said:

24/6/2016- Update- Oculus patches out hardware drm after it was broken

 

In a surprise move the latest Oculus runtime patch has removed the hardware drm component which checked for the physical presence of an Oculus certified headset. The move comes just  one month after the hardware drm feature was introduced (something unfamiliar to PC users). The introduction of the hardware drm had forced the hand of the Revive mod author into bypassing the drm which inadvertently paved the way for potential piracy of games from the Oculus Store (although that was not his intention).

 

The creator of the Revive mod has offered an olive branch and graciously thanked Oculus for the latest move

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4pm2uc/revive_062_released_oculus_removes_headset_check/

 

So there are two possible reasons for the backtracking here by Oculus

-they have heard the community outcry, bad PR etc and decided to backtrack on their policy of fighting against compatibility mods

OR

-they simply removed the feature because they realized it had been quickly bypassed and hence served no purpose and was only hurting them

 

There are those amongst the PC community who were willing to grudgingly accept the fact that facebook was paying money to 3rd party devs to keep games away from competing storefronts such as Steam. But when it was taken a step further into the realm of hardware drm to lock out Vive users the criticism became unanimous.

 

In an interview with Gamespot Oculus's Anna Sweet clarified the reason why they went after the mod despite earlier promises not to fight the mod community.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-defends-exclusives-launch-and-drm-controver/1100-6441153/

So their official stance is that they don't have a problem with game specific mods which are not distributed. But this mod is different because it's a 'platform' wide mod which has the potential to make all Oculus games compatible with other HMDs.

three rounds of applause to the PC community, cause we're better than the console one and won't take BS for an answer 

[samcool55]

Yaaaay! They finally made imo the right decision.

Won't change my mind about oculus tho

 

Let's hope oculus keeps making the right decisions.