Oculus backs down, patches DRM out of Oculus Rift

The ongoing war for virtual reality (VR) dominance took a slightly ugly turn in May when Oculus introduced hardware-specific DRM for games launched on their platform. Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Rift had earlier insisted that he would never implement something like DRM (Digital Rights Management). It’s now come to light that Oculus has backed down and removed this DRM.

Bad for devs! #piracy
Revive revived: Oculus DRM push shattered as DIY devs strike back https://t.co/BZd3ugkpEl #vr pic.twitter.com/38OmeqgE5M

— Rick King (@RickKing16) June 23, 2016

Developers/hackers from a group calling themselves LibreVR had published a hack called ReVive that allowed HTC Vive users to play Oculus Rift games on their headset. In May, Oculus released a patch that performed a “platform integrity check,” essentially locking out any hardware that wasn’t the Rift from playing VR games designed for the Rift. The creators of LibreVR easily managed to create a workaround for the DRM. They updated the ReVive code and released the source-code on GitHub. Oculus has been very vehement in their defense of DRM at E3 2016. However, on June 24, Oculus released a patch for the system that completely removes this DRM. ArsTechnica points out that Oculus didn’t mention the removal in their patch notes. The creator of LibreVR, in an email to Motherboard, told them that he was “astounded” by the news and that he has since reverted ReVive to the pre-DRM version and deleted all DRM-related code from GitHub. In a statement to the press, Oculus says, “We won’t use hardware checks as part of DRM on PC in the future.” This of course does not necessarily mean that Oculus won’t use DRM in the future, but it’s a step in the right direction. Oculus insists that it believes that protecting developer content is “critical to the long-term success of the VR industry.” They also add that they’ll do their best to ensure that developers are willing to invest in VR content.