- First, make a really expensive toy with no obvious practical application.
- Then, make consumers choose between your toy and your competitions' versions, when there aren't yet any games to speak of for either of your platforms.
- Make sure you use DRM to lock that shit down.
- In the process, make sure you break the promise you'd made to your customers that you wouldn't use DRM to lock that shit down.
- Profit?!
As recently as 5 months ago, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was promising his customers that they could play the software they bought from the Oculus store on "whatever they want," guaranteeing that the company wouldn't shut down apps that let customers move their purchased software to non-Oculus hardware.
But now, Oculus has changed its DRM to exclude Revive, a "proof-of-concept compatibility layer between the Oculus SDK [software development kit] and OpenVR," that let players buy software in the Oculus store and run it on competing hardware.
The company billed the update as an anti-piracy measure, but Revive's developer, who calls themself "Libre VR," points out that the DRM only prevents piracy using non-Oculus hardware, and allows for unlimited piracy by Oculus owners.So... My apartment doesn't have a 5½ x 6½ foot space free in which to set up an HTC Vive, even if I'd wanted one; Oculus are well on their way to being exactly like the kind of anti-competitive outfit that people were afraid of, when it was first announced that Facebook had bought their souls; Sony's VR only works with a PS4, which I neither have nor want... What does that leave? And why would I want it? For that matter, why should I want any of them?
Add a heavy-handed DRM policy to a basically useless, over-hyped, and way too expensive product, and it's no sale, at least for me. GG, Oculus. GG.