Oculus Removes DRM Checks for Its VR Headsets

Oculus made a rather poor decision not too long ago in an attempt to prevent games released exclusively for its headset to be played on products such as the HTC Vive. The company implemented a DRM hardware check, which wasn’t received too warmly by the gaming community. It all started when a Reddit user named “CrossVR” released something called Revive – a tool that would allow Oculus Rift exclusive games to be played on HTC Vive headsets. Oculus then responded by implementing the DRM hardware check, but CrossVR eventually found a way to work around it.

The bad side of this workaround was that it facilitated piracy, and so Oculus made the right choice and decided to remove the DRM checks completely. In response, CrossVR released a new version of Revive that doesn’t include the workaround. Oculus had a few things to say regarding the whole situation:

“We continually revise our entitlement and anti-piracy systems, and in the June update we’ve removed the check for Rift hardware from the entitlement check. We won’t use hardware checks as part of DRM on PC in the future. We believe protecting developer content is critical to the long-term success of the VR industry, and we’ll continue taking steps in the future to ensure that VR developers can keep investing in ground-breaking new VR content.”

Apparently, Oculus won’t implement this DRM in the future, and I think that this is the right decision. How about you?