Platform exclusivity is a divisive issue in VR; on one hand, big financial backing helps create awesome games like Lone Echo [9/10]on the other hand, if you chose the ‘wrong’ headset, you’re boxed out of what might otherwise become one of your favorite games. Thanks to ReVive, a free hack which allows Vive users to play games from the Oculus platform, you can now play both Lone Echo and it’s free multiplayer companion game Echo Arena with an HTC Vive.

With the advent of Revive, a project built by Jules Blok (aka CrossVR), the hack became central to discussion of Oculus’ approach to building a VR platform when Oculus modified their DRM in a way that prevented Revive from functioning, thus blocking Vive users from playing Oculus games. Community outcry over the decision eventually led Oculus to reverse that particular stance on DRM, saying that in the future they wouldn’t use headset verification as part of the platform’s security protections.

Now, two of the most well-received Oculus-funded games—both the campaign mode Lone Echo selling for $40 and the free multiplayer mode Echo Arena—have gained unofficial support for the HTC Vive. And with a native 360-degree setup already supported by Oculus, it’s practically plug-and-play. Of course, there’s also no telling if Oculus’ decision will hold into the future, so the mantra “buyer beware” is still in effect for potential Revive users looking to purchase on the Oculus Store.

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Vive Users Can Join Rift Friends in ‘Facebook Spaces’ With Revive Hack

OpenXR (formerly Khronos VR) is also looking to unite what it considers a fragmented market by advocating a universal cross-platform standard that, according to the developers, enables applications to be written once to run on any VR system, and to access VR devices integrated into those VR systems to be used by applications. Names like Epic Games, AMD, ARM, Valve, Google and even Oculus are helping with the initiative.

Legendary programmer and Oculus CTO John Carmack had this to say about OpenXR:

“Khronos’ open APIs have been immensely valuable to the industry, balancing the forces of differentiation and innovation against gratuitous vendor incompatibility. As virtual reality matures and the essential capabilities become clear in practice, a cooperatively developed open standard API is a natural and important milestone. Oculus is happy to contribute to this effort.”

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who left the company back in March, has also backed ReVive financially to the tune of $2,000 per month to support its continued development.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • GigaSora

    Ill get the oculus vs vive hate battle started:

    • GigaSora

      This is exactly why I got a vive. Money grabbing, crappy tracking oculus is try to start a console war.

      • GigaSora

        Its clearly just good business strategy man. You obviously dont understand anything, so Im not even gonna explain it to you.

        • GigaSora

          Yeah well… f you. Im not giving up on my 800 dollars purchase. Trying to bring me to your side by belittling me will get you nowhere.

          • GigaSora

            Jeez guys. We’ve become more bipartisan and inter argumenative than the political landscape.

          • Amer Fiaz Ahmed

            this is really sad, Giga if you need a someone to talk to, I am here for you :D….btw HTC Vive for the win!

      • GigaSora

        Oculus can do that because theyre better!

        • GigaSora

          No theyre not. Theyre worse.

      • Chris7

        You know viveport is having exclusives right

    • Get Schwifty!

      LOL – good set of comments ;)

    • blueredgreenyellow

      … I stay away from VR comment sections for three months, and I come back to find this madness? Time for me to go back into hiding.

  • Andy McEvoy

    ..

  • Art Sin

    Oculus Doing the right thing and paying developers to make interesting games. Thank god for Oculus.

    • Frank Un

      What? Not only has valve paid almost triple to developers than Oculus has pout towards projects, but Valve wants open-party games, not exclusivity. Oculus is killing the VR market. If anything, thank god for Valve. Oculus needs to die, especially since they have been caught for stealing tech from ZeniMax and had to pay out half a BILLION dollars!
      Fuck Oculus!

      • Simplex

        “Not only has valve paid almost triple to developers than Oculus”
        Source?

      • Chris7

        Valve wants open of course… Keep the monopoly

        • superg05

          source

      • Chris7

        And they beat that court case stop spreading lies… Payment was for palmer broke nda…. Not oculus stole trade secrets

  • Roman

    No native support no money, go ahead.

  • jkflipflop98

    This one single issue makes me hate Oculus with a burning passion.

    All they have to do is get rid of the stupid exclusive crap. That’s it. Drop the “we’ll only give you money if you lock out everyone else” requirement and everyone will be singing your praises. Require the game to be Rift compatible and on your doofy little store at launch then give them the money. If they want to make a SteamVR version that everyone can enjoy as well, then so be it.

    • GigaSora

      This all seems like a personal problem for Vive owners. Have you considered getting a rift? We’re all happy with it.

      • 5urv1v3 n0w

        Go fuck yourself. In the comments below you’re dissing Oculus and here you are sucking Facebook’s cock.

        • Evgeni Zharsky

          you’re one of the reasons i’ll probably go with a Rift. Don’t need any triggered little Vive fanboys ruining my online lobbies.

      • Mable Sharkfin

        Owning both systems myself, the VIVE is totally superior.

    • Frank Pejril

      Well if a developer wants to be published by oculus or oculus wants to publish a dev’s game it’s well within their rights

      At the same time, there is a significant enough difference between the type of VR experiences provided by oculus and vive (out-of-the-box room-scale vs. more immersive and intuitive touch controls) that trying to develop with both in mind can be a pain. Oculus games cater to the oculus control set and experience, and vive games cater to the vive control set and experience. Deal with it.

      Oculus didn’t force anyone to sign a deal, it’s the dev’s choice.

      It’s like asking Nintendo to release ARMS for PC. It doesn’t make sense with the available controls.

  • McTaco

    I bought a vive, then a vive pro a few days later. The pro is much better.
    As far as Oculus, they started this before Vive got off the ground, so kudos to them for being the ones responsible for VR gaming to hit the mainstream. Did they have some issues getting started because of lawsuits and NDA aggreements? Sure, breaking the NDA literally means he used code developed at Zeni to start Oculus. But again, he got VR gaming mainstream. As a gamer, that’s mad respect from me, regardless of how it happened.

    That being said. Oculus tried to DRM lock their games to their headsets and the community outcry forced their hand to reverse the decision. They also said headset verification would not be apart of their DRM process in the future.

    That’s best case scenario.
    You can cry about DRM all day, but in the end, almost all platforms have some sort of DRM to protect their business and prevent others from gaining business from their efforts.
    Business is just that; Business.
    As unmoral as some business standpoints are, it is what makes the world go round; money.

  • Fenrisfil

    VR Exclusives make no sense whatsoever!

    1) It turns people off investing the large amount of cash to do high end PC VR if they can’t access a significant portion of the games.

    2) It reduces the potential player pool for multiplayers by half. There are not a lot of VR gamers right now so halfing that amount impacts any game with a multiplayer element.

    3) Major studios won’t want to invest in the platform if it doesn’t represent decent profits and without their resources VR may never reach it’s maximum potential.

    4) Current users of the other platform may end up hating yours and may be more likely to give up on VR all toghter when a new generation rolls along than switch to your brand

    5) It sends the message to potential buyers that you don’t have enough confidence in your hardware alone to get people to chose your platform as you need these exclusive games even despite points 1-4.