ReVive creator claims to have received Palmer Luckey backing

The creator of a mod that allows HTC Vive owners to play Oculus Rift titles claims that controversial Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is now providing financial backing.

Jules Block now has a Patreon so he can raise the funds needed to cover the time spent keeping the mod up and running. And his latest update is quite surprising: As some of you suspected the sudden extreme jump in the pledge amount is indeed by Palmer Luckey. I’d like to thank him for his pledge and everything he has done for the VR community as a whole."

ReVive was first released last year and became a popular tool for Vive owners to access exclusive Oculus games like Robo Recall. At one stage Oculus updated its software to block the use of the mod, although the company reversed the move following the inevitable uproar.

Over the past year Revive has achieved compatibility with most Oculus games, in some cases bringing nearly native quality support," Block’s Patreon says. The first priority is to ensure good compatibility for the latest games. So far I’ve spent more than $500 on Oculus Home to test games on Revive. Your money would go towards buying new releases every month.

The performance of Revive varies from one game to the other, mainly due to each game using the Oculus Runtime in slightly different ways. Perfecting this part of a compatibility layer like Revive is the most difficult part and requires a lot of research."

Luckey left Oculus earlier this year. His departure came following a long period of silence after it was discovered he had backed an online group dedicated to spreading anti-Hilary Clinton propaganda during last year’s US election. Allegations that Luckey has been financially supporting the Trump administration have since continued, too.