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Vive owners, rejoice! You can play exclusive Oculus Rift games again

Oculus has removed a block on a piece of software that allowed Vive users to run games designed for the Rift.

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Roger Cheng (he/him/his) was the executive editor in charge of CNET News, managing everything from daily breaking news to in-depth investigative packages. Prior to this, he was on the telecommunications beat and wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal for nearly a decade and got his start writing and laying out pages at a local paper in Southern California. He's a devoted Trojan alum and thinks sleep is the perfect -- if unattainable -- hobby for a parent.
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VR headset maker Oculus had blocked software called Revive that allowed Vive owners to play games from the Oculus store. Shown above is the Oculus Rift.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Oculus has backtracked on a decision to block rival virtual reality system Vive from playing its games.

The VR system maker, a unit of Facebook, had previously blocked software called Revive that allowed Vive owners to play games from the Oculus store, including games that were exclusive to the Rift. LibreVR, which created the tool, said Friday that Oculus had removed the headset check that prevented Revive from working.

Oculus confirmed the move. "We continually revise our entitlement and antipiracy systems, and in the June update we've removed the check for Rift hardware from the entitlement check," the company said. "We won't use hardware checks as part of DRM on PC in the future."

Oculus and Vive marked the beginning of the high-end virtual reality experience when they launched earlier this year.

HTC declined to comment.