Oculus Rift 1.4 update patches HTC Vive-ported titles, updates on shipping includes some European and U.K. movement

Oculus has recently rolled out a new patch for its Oculus app, which effectively shuts down the ability to play exclusive Oculus Rift titles on the HTC Vive. This seems to be Oculus’s main stand regarding the exclusivity of some of the titles made for the headset.

According to one Reddit user CrossVR and a developer of the Revive app, the latest update 1.4 has already broken the support for the Revive.

“From my preliminary research it seems that Oculus has also added a check whether the Oculus Rift headset is connected to their Oculus Platform DRM. Because only the Oculus Platform DRM has been changed, this means that none of the Steam or standalone games were affected. Only games published on the Oculus Store that use the Oculus Platform SDK are affected,” said the Reddit user.

For Oculus Rift owners, the update to the app does brings some stability and performance improvements. It also improves the sensor tracking and delivers some bug fixes. Best of all, more currencies, including AUD, CAD, Euro, Pound and Yen are now supported by all games in the appropriate markets. The full change log for the new update ca be seen in the official Oculus Forums.

The Reddit user had provided a workaround for the issue. However, the main point appears to be that people who do not own an Oculus Rift will no longer be able to play Oculus Home games using other headsets.

Previously, it was reported that an unofficial patch installment had allowed the release of Vive-compatible titles from the Oculus Store. This means that those who have an HTC Vive headset but do want to play some Oculus-exclusives can already do so with the unofficial method, PC World reported.

As per the source, the patch had allowed for some layer of compatibility, which allowed some functions from the Oculus Runtime to be translated to OpenVR calls. The games that were included in the “Revive” titles compatible with the Vive headset included “Oculus Dreamdeck” and “Lucky’s Tale.” Other tiles that made use of Unity and Unreal engines appeared to also accept the trick, allowing Vive owners to play Oculus Rift games.

The unofficial patch had brought in some discussions as to the way the Oculus Rift headset works, especially since Oculus exclusives are locked to the specific headset. The patch had proven that it is possible to free up the game for other headsets.

In the meantime, fans who are waiting for news of the Oculus Rift shipments, the live thread for Oculus Rift CV1 shipping has been abuzz with activity. It appears that since last week, there has been some movement for Europe.

According to the Reddit thread, there are order processes done as early as May 17 in Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway and U.K. The day after, there was a reported big volume of European and U.K. processing. This is good news for fans who have been waiting for their headsets.