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Rift and Quest 2 - What a scam!

SCDaemon
Explorer

So I just got a quest 2 because my Rift S had acquired a bug where it kept just forgetting I had a guardian entirely in the middle of gameplay (thanks for that). The rift S is end of life so you can't buy a new one. However I then find out that meta is gouging players by making them by all their games twice. 

 

Yes I am aware you can play PC link. If you do it wirelessly you get random bits of lag that just make gameplay painful. They fail to provide you with a cable that would allow you to plug it into your PC. Basically all your investments are gone. What a giant scam. Totally disgusted by this.

 

It's just like if steam made you buy all your games again if you got a new PC, except that steam was manufacturing the PCs, and steam made them badly so they'd fall apart over a couple of years. Oh and by the way the one you bought a few years ago that you could play your games on, yeah we don't sell that anymore.  

 

The meta business strategy: The metaverse is coming, we want to lead the way. Let's shamelessly gouge our new customers so they jump the first instant they get to a competing platform and never return to us again. 

8 REPLIES 8

Pixie40
Expert Trustee

Not all games. Only the ones that don't have Cross buy enabled. PCVR and Stand Alone VR are two different beasts.

 

Also keep in mind you don't HAVE to buy them twice. The Quest 2 can be used for PCVR via either a wired connection via a USB-C cable or wireless PCVR via Air Link, and thus you can play your PCVR games bought on the Rift store and Steam. In fact, I buy games both on the Rift store and on the Quest store, because not all games I want are available on the Quest store.

Lo, a quest! I seek the threads of my future in the seeds of the past.

SCDaemon
Explorer

Please note the following in my initial post: 

 

"Yes I am aware you can play PC link. If you do it wirelessly you get random bits of lag that just make gameplay painful. They fail to provide you with a cable that would allow you to plug it into your PC. Basically all your investments are gone. What a giant scam. Totally disgusted by this."

 

I should also note I have a very high spec PC and I've tried connecting the PC to the router with a LAN cable to see if that helps with the lagging. It didn't. I did not experience any issues on my rift headset when playing. The lag is purely an air link thing. Not including a cable means you're paying extra for wired. 

As for PCVR and stand alone VR being two different beasts, why? You are using the same controllers, and a visually very similar headset. As a consumer there is no difference in how you interact with the hardware. The only difference is where the processing power is placed to manage it. There is no reason why that should make it a very different beast. That's like saying gaming on a laptop and a desktop with hardware and software bought from the exact same manufacturer are very different things. 

 

As for the cross buy list - As I understand it, this requires you to manually identify which games you have that are cross buy. Look them up in the store. "Buy" them for free. I tried this, went through my full games list on the PC and searched for them one by one on the quest. It took a lot of time and I found that none of my games were cross buy. I've not seen anywhere what percentage of apps are cross buy, which I think is likely quite telling in and of itself. The only thing I found that was sort of cross buy was beat sabre where you have to rebuy the game but they let you keep your expansion packs. I have no idea how well that works and have not bothered trying. 


So to summarise: 

1) Customer buys updated hardware from same vendor, using it in the exact same way but is forced to rebuy everything. 

2) System to play PCVR is either too laggy to be playable or requires you to buy a cable to find out if it would work. 
3) Cross buy is entirely manual process that requires you to individually check each game one by one in the store. None of mine did. No section in the store to identify cross buy games.  

4) Hardware needed to access previously bought games on PC is no longer sold. 

 

I don't count that as enabling people to play their old games. 

SCDaemon
Explorer

I would add to this to say that unless Meta have very clearly and publicly stated that they will not do this again, anyone looking to buy games on the Quest should assume that they are buying apps they will be able to use on one headset until it dies which is unlikely to take very long. My Rift S made it 2.5 years with the headset put back safely in its case and with plenty of room to work with so I didn't bang into anything. That's not a good lifespan. 

 

Edit: I also purchased my headset on Amazon. I wish I'd gone digging further. The most upvoted review is a 1 star review with almost 3,755 helpful votes (more upvotes than all the 5 star reviews received combined). There are more people looking at the sort of company meta is and walking away than there are shrugging and buying because they never had one before and want a relatively cheap and shiny headset. Unfortunately to Meta's leadership taking a do the right thing by your customers approach is seen as naive and bad business.  

Pixie40
Expert Trustee

So, you can't understand why a stand alone VR ecosystem is a different beast then PCVR? Wow, that's amusing to me. Let me try putting this in a way you might understand. Do you have a smart phone or tablet? You probably do. Would you expect that smart phone and/or tablet to be capable of running your favorite PC or console games? For example, how about Elden Ring, do you expect that to run as is on a phone or tablet? Or maybe Elite Dangerous, surely that could run on a phone. Right?

 

When porting a PCVR to Quest or Quest 2 the devs have to do quite a bit of work. Despite how low res the graphics of Super Hot appear, the developers had to do a lot of work to get the game to run on a Quest. In fact, they had to pretty much recreate the game just for the Quest. Unless the title was initially developed around the Quest or Quest 2's hardware, you can't just copy/paste the code and assets. The Quest 2's GPU is no where near as capable as your high end PC's GPU. Neither does it have as much RAM or as good of a CPU.

 

If the developer has to recreate the game from the ground up to get it to work on the Quest, why shouldn't they expect to be paid for their work?  Allowing cross-buy or not is a decision each developer makes, it's not one Meta is making for them. But I get it, you're angry about being "forced" to buy a game twice. I don't know what games and VR apps you have. But I do know that even without planning for it, half of my VR library on the Quest is cross-buy enabled. I do wish they hadn't removed the section of the store details which said if a game was cross buy enabled or not.

 

You're right, the Quest 2 doesn't come with a long enough cable for wired PCVR outside of a few seated games where you're using a keyboard/mouse or a HOTAS flight stick. But there are plenty of options for a long enough link cable. And most of them are under $20. I'd opted for the official Link Cable, No I don't regret dropping $80 on it. I'd done research, and decided I didn't mind paying extra for the cable which had the best build quality according to the reviews I was reading. Are you that adverse to buying accessories? If so, can I further assume you refuse to buy a better facial interface then the stock foam one? Because getting a better (and more hygienic) facial interface or head strap will cost you a lot more then most of the recommended link cables.

 

And you're right that Air Link has it's fair share of issues. Updates all too often cause graphical problems and connection instability issues. And if you whip your head around quickly you'll sometimes see black bars as the HMD doesn't update the visuals fast enough. On the other hand, I've had that same 'black bars when moving my head quickly" issue with my Vive Cosmos too. But lately Air Link has actually been pretty good. Nice and reliable connection, no noticeable input lag, and I've encountered those "black bars" less often. I was just playing Half-Life Alyx the other day using Air Link with zero issues beyond my horrible aim and panic dropping shotgun shells when trying to reload. After that I plugged in my Tflight 4 flight stick and played Elite Dangerous in VR via air link. While playing I had no issues with out flying and/or out fighting space pirates while transporting cargo. It was as responsive as wired VR usually is.

 

But hey, here's a riddle for you. What sort of wireless network do you use? Because while Air Link will technically work with a 2.4g network, you really do want it to be using a 5g network like is recommended. You'll also want your PC to be wired into the modem/router and to have wifi enabled on your PC. For some reason that helps with connection stability. Also, when doing PCVR do you crank up all the graphic settings as high as you can? If so, try turning those down a notch or three if using Air Link. You might find that this helps due to your PC not trying to stream the game and maintain those ultra high visuals at the same time.

 

I get it. PC Master Race and all that. You expect to always run with maxed out graphics just because you paid a fortune for your high end computer. I'm sorry to say though that even high end computers can chug with certain games or use cases if you run everything with maxed out graphics.

 

Just a reminder, but until summer 2021 Oculus Link (wired) was still an "experimental" feature. Even now it's still being improved. And Air Link has only recently left the "experimental" feature list. It's still being worked on and optimized. If you think it's bad now, you should have seen how bad Air Link was when the feature first got released.

 

And remember that developers don't have to allow cross buy. In fact, it makes more business sense for them not to do so. After all, the devs put in the work to create a version of their game capable of running on less powerful hardware. When a game does allow it, that's the developer being generous. Would it be nice if everything on both stores was cross buy enabled? Sure it would. Is it ever going to happen? Probably not. And I hope you're not one of those people who whine and complain that their Steam VR library can't be installed on their Quest or Quest 2 and played as a stand alone VR title.

 

Yes, that is a thing. I've seen so many threads with the complaint of "I bought (insert game) on Steam, why can't I install it on my Quest 2?! it's a scam!"

Lo, a quest! I seek the threads of my future in the seeds of the past.

SCDaemon
Explorer

Your analogy with a phone and a tablet is not correct. This is the same manufacturer, providing the same interaction, controls, visual input, the works. A desktop and a laptop are a good comparison. Your input is the mouse and keyboard for both. You look at a screen for both. One might have a slightly bigger screen or higher resolution but they're effectively the same. You expect all your programs to work on either and not to have to buy things twice. 

 

However for the sake of argument let's look at what happens when an app store produces hardware. The steam deck is a great example of this. It's a tablet, it's lower powered than a computer. It uses its own hardware but can link to a computer's hardware (which works seamlessly and without issues). You don't have to rebuy your games, your saves port seamlessly between devices, it all just works. This is the way Oculus should have approached it.

 

The example with a mobile phone is silly. This is different hardware, made by different manufacturers, using different software, made by different developers, with a different method of interaction, and serving a different purpose. You wouldn't use a keyboard, mouse and screen with a phone. 

 

Saying that lower hardware power means a drastically different level of development is also silly. Some computers have great hardware, some have poor hardware. You might not be able to play all games on a system with poor hardware, but you wouldn't expect to rebuy everything just because you opted to use a laptop rather than a high end desktop. 

 

The point about there not being a cable included for PC link is that it doesn't provide a viable out of box option. This is very much the same as saying hey you can have a laptop but if you want to use it unplugged you have to buy your battery separately. I would mind a hell of a lot less if they'd not scammed everyone on the games already. 

SCDaemon
Explorer

Also I would note that this is all exacerbated by the fact that Oculus decided they would force everyone off the PC VR option entirely. If it was a clear choice, hey you can do PC VR or you can do standalone VR then even that while bad would be not as bad. Unfortunately at every turn, Oculus or I guess I should now say Meta as Oculus was a decent company, have opted to take the choice that is most detrimental to their loyal user base. 

KowBoy_2k
Honored Guest

I totally agree with you. This is scam as it's not clear and the consumer, like me, feels robbed when buying a game on Oculus Store, then still not purchased on the Oculus PC App. Worse, it appears purchased on the Oculus mobile/onboard app. I lost 2 days contacting consumer service that has no idea why and finally get the answer "it's not cross-buy".

 

This is very confusing and there was no mention before buying the game if it's cross-buy or not, you have to check manually after consumer service gave you a secret URL. That's not fair at all.

 

The worst yhing is I purchased the "Apocalypse Pack", promoting 2 games in a 50€ bundle : Arizona Sunshine + After the Fall. As a PC gamer, I thought that was a decent deal on the Oculus Store, but only After the Fall is cross-buy, not Arizona Sunshine. Again, this was mentionned nowhere at anytime.

 

I feel robbed as I have to purchase the game twice on the same platform to enjoy it fully.

 

As consumer, I expect to get what I paid for without hidden mention. Why After the Fall is cross-buy and not the other game ? This makes no sense.

 

This could be a mistake and it could be fixed. If not, this is fooling.

Your smartphone comparison isn't accurate enough to make a solid exemple. There is no game on phone/tablet at 30€, most of the time they are free ot very low price, including in-game purchase to make the economic model valid, because the gaming experience is "light" the price can't be high as console or PC games. 

 

However, if we have a game on PC we can mirror on tablet/smartphone, there is such services like Shadow Gaming, GeforceNow and many others ; and guess what, we pay the service (again, there is also free solutions) and don't have to pay the game twice.

 

Again, we pay a game title on a Store, we expect to have it no matter the format. There's no such thing as "insert game title - PCVR" or "insert game title - Oculus Standalone only". It's the same titleand the same URL - I just checked it again to be sure. Some are "cross-buy", some aren't, but there is no mention on the product page. Sorry but that's not clear and that's profitable for the store. 

 

Also, on Steam you don't pay a game twice because you want to install it on your PC and your Mac ; it's two different beasts, but one price - no cross-buy scam.