Oculus has made a point in the past of protecting its Rift exclusive games from Vive users, even going so far as to add an update that had games check for Rift hardware before being playable. In a surprise move, the company has now reversed its position.

"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," Oculus told The Verge in a statement. "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."

The move was first noticed by the makers of Revive, a system that allows Rift games to be played on the HTC Vive. "I've only just tested this and I'm still in disbelief, but it looks like Oculus removed the headset check from the DRM in Oculus Runtime 1.5," the site said. "As such I've reverted the DRM patch and removed all binaries from previous releases that contained the patch."

Exclusivity deals have always been an attempt by companies to get people to buy their hardware. Just look at the Microsoft and Sony deals. Valve founder Gabe Newell has already come down on the side of "bad idea" for the burgeoning industry, while Oculus' stance reinforces co-founder Palmer Luckey's take on the issue. And our own Josh Hawkins thinks the new VR industry is just too young for these type of deals and could hurt overall. Whatever side you take, the next year or so will be very interesting.