Palmer Luckey reportedly donates $2,000 to Vive hack

CrossVR claims that former Oculus boss Palmer Luckey has contributed funding towards the development of ReVive.

ReVive is a hack that enables HTC Vive owners to play virtual reality titles that are exclusive to Oculus Rift, providing they aren't available through Steam.

UploadVR reports Luckey pledged $2,000 towards the hack's Patreon campaign, referencing a thank you post from ReVive's creator Jules Blok. At the time of writing, the Patreon's monthly total is $1,975, so presumably the $2,000 was a one-off donation. Either that, or Luckey has since removed the pledge following the post that openly declares his support.

Even if he has withdrawn his support, pledging in the first place was an interesting move on Luckey's part given that he co-founded Oculus VR and was instrumental in the invention of the Rift. However, clearly his loyalties to the company have waned somewhat since he left the company in March.

While the full details of his departure are still unclear, it followed controversy surrounding the revelation that Luckey had been funding a pro-Trump "shitposting" group in the run-up to the US election, and the $500m loss in a court case against ZeniMax Media after the Oculus co-founder was found guilty of failing to comply to a non-disclosure agreement.

Luckey has recently revealed his next business may not be related to the games industry at all, with talk of a defence industry start-up.

UploadVR notes that Oculus openly condoned ReVive when it first emerged and managed to block access to the hack via an Oculus Home update. However, the site also reports back in February Oculus' head of content Jason Rubin hinted that the firm is working to make its games more compatible with Vive hacks such as this.