The Revive hack that allowed Oculus Rift-exclusive apps to be used on other VR headsets is no more. As reported by Motherboard, the 1.4 update to the Oculus App includes “platform integrity checks” that determine whether an Oculus Rift is connected to a PC when running software purchased from the Oculus Store. And if the headset isn't present, the app won't run.
Oculus VR confirmed the presence of the “entitlement check” in the latest update, saying that it was added “to curb piracy and protect games and apps that developers have worked so hard to make.” And while the company didn't mention Revive by name, it did state that “this update wasn't targeted at a specific hack.”
“When we first learned about hacks that modify our software to interfere with the security, functionality and integrity of the Oculus ecosystem, and allow games to run outside the scope of our QA, testing and support, we immediately notified the community that we will not be supporting or maintaining the long term usability or quality of hacked software,” Oculus VR said in a statement. “We take the security, functionality and integrity of our system software very seriously and people should expect that hacked games won’t work indefinitely as regular updates to content, apps and our platform may break the hacks.”
The creator of Revive, who goes by Libre VR, told Motherboard that while the check helps prevent piracy by people who didn't purchase an Oculus Rift, it doesn't do anything to prevent it among those who did, since the presence of the hardware does nothing to verify the validity of the software. “And this clearly excludes anyone who bought the game, but didn't buy an Oculus Rift. Even if Revive wasn't targeted, they were probably more than aware of the collateral damage,” he said.
Regardless of which side of that fence you come down on, the fact that Revive no longer works should come as no surprise to anyone: Oculus said when Revive was first released that it not condone the hack, and warned, as it did above, that future updates to its apps "are likely to break hacked software.”
