Larcenauts, the new VR hero shooter from Impulse Gear, launched two weeks on Quest, Rift, and Steam. However, the studio says it ran into a last minute issue which meant the SteamVR version was only compatible with Oculus headsets out of the gate, leading to confusion among buyers who attempted to play the game with non-Oculus headsets. Now an update posted over the weekend has seemed to resolved the issue, bringing equal support to HTC Vive and Valve Index as well.

Update (June 28th, 2021): In an update over the weekend, Impulse Gear has fixed the issue with limited SteamVR headset support. Now the game is said to equally support HTC Vive, Valve Index, and Oculus Rift.

The update also brings cross-play lobbies across Steam and Oculus versions of the game, which is done by entering unique lobby codes so you can play with friends. The article explaining the now resolved issue follows below:

Original Article (June 21st, 2021): As far as Steam goes, the overwhelming expectation from customers is that VR games sold there will always support native SteamVR headsets like Vive and Index. Although this is almost always the case in practice, there’s actually no technical requirement; developers are free to sell Oculus-only titles (or for any specific headset) on Steam if they choose.

In the case of Larcenauts, developer Impulse Gear had announced before launch that the game would support SteamVR headsets, which lead to customer confusion when the Steam version of the game launched last week with support for Oculus headsets only.

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Aside from marking the game’s Steam store page with Oculus as the only compatible headsets, the studio wasn’t particularly explicit that the SteamVR version didn’t support non-Oculus headsets out of the gate. It seems the studio may have expected that Steam would warn buyers that their headset was not listed among the game’s compatible headsets, but unfortunately Steam doesn’t have that functionality.

Impulse Gear says it was indeed planning to support Oculus and SteamVR headsets at launch, but ran into a bug and decided to launch the game only with support for Oculus headsets for the time being, though a fix is in the works.

“Unfortunately we ran into an issue with UE4 and SteamVR compatibility so it is Oculus only for now. We are working with all parties involved to get this addressed ASAP. This is super disappointing for us as well… we love SteamVR,” the studio told Road to VR.

Larcenauts has seen some small hot fixes on Steam since last week’s launch, but as of Saturday the studio says it’s “still working to address the SteamVR compatibility issues.”

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Andrew Jakobs

    and decided to launch the game only with support for Oculus headsets for the time being, though a fix is in the works.

    Well, I really don’t see the point of releasing it on Steam as an Oculus only game, even if it’s just for a moment, they should just have waited until the SteamVR version was also fixed. And oh please, they knew very well Steam doesn’t have an option that would warm non-oculus headsets if your headset is not marked as compatible..

    • Erilis

      I didn’t know steam sells oculus exclusive games.

  • guest

    I didn’t know that the System Requirements Minimum and Recommended on Steam were so meaningless.

  • wheeler

    Did they really not see how this would backfire? The initial launch is the most critical moment for games like this, but now a large percentage of PCVR users will associate “Larcenauts” with “that game that was Facebook VR exclusive on Steam”. The Steam version should have just been delayed.