Now we know why Doom VFR didn’t work on an Oculus Rift when it launched yesterday.
A beta version of SteamVR was quickly dispatched as a workaround that made the game work on a Rift, but there are still some VR community members wondering about the reason for the initial failure to launch. After all, Bethesda parent company ZeniMax is still owed $500 million by Oculus, according to a jury’s decision. So it is easy for folks to imagine other motivations in play here.
According to a statement from Bethesda, though, it happened because “the development team has not yet had an opportunity to test, optimize, and refine the game for Oculus Rift.”
Here’s the full statement:
Today, DOOM VFR was officially released for HTC Vive and PSVR. Our development team has focused on making the game look and play great on those two platforms first. However, as we’ve always said, our goal with all of our VR titles is to bring them to as many platforms as possible and we continue to evaluate expanding these options. When and if we have more information about additional platforms, we will let everyone know.
At launch, we are only supporting Vive and PSVR. While we’ve heard Steam has been updated to allow the game to be playable on Rift via a Beta, the development team has not yet had an opportunity to test, optimize, and refine the game for Oculus Rift. That is why the game was not playable on Rift immediately; we don’t want anyone to have a bad experience on something we haven’t tested yet.
We understand Rift owners found this frustrating today, and we apologize for any confusion. Our goal is always to provide players the most stable and optimized experience on every platform we support.
