It’s wholly expected that to play video games, and VR games in particular, you need a certain level of hardware. That’s normal, understandable and perfectly reasonable.
But what hasn’t happened before is games locking content to specific CPUs after release.
That’s the bizarre situation that has happened with Arizona Sunshine, a VR apocalyptic zombie shooter which launched today. It’s a premium title with a regular price of US$39.99, a price that sits in the same kind of territory as major indie releases, recently discounted AAA blockbusters, and so on.
But despite the fairly substantial barrier to entry, it turns out there’s an extra cost. A thread was posted on the game’s Steam forums questioning why they didn’t have access to the single player horde mode on both of their PCs.
The PC that had horde mode was, according to the user, sporting an Intel Core i7-6700 CPU, while the other was running an older 4th generation Intel i5 chip.
Not long after posting, developer Vertigo Games confirmed that the single-player horde mode and an apocalyptic mode (the highest level of difficulty in the campaign) would only be available to owners of 5th, 6th and 7th generation Intel Core i7 users.
Single Player Horde Mode & Apocalyptic Mode
These are two game modes that we have not focused on previously.
Working with Intel allowed us to create even more content than we originally planned, including these modes and the physics systems in the game, making Arizona Sunshine one of the richest VR experiences possible. We want to give 5th, 6th and 7th gen Intel® Core™ i7 owners first glimpse into these additional modes, but they’ll be available March 6, 2017 to everyone who owns the game.
It’s a surprising, and wholly unwelcome, direction for VR development. There are plenty of Intel i5 CPUs that can run Arizona Sunshine just fine, but they won’t get access to the new modes. AMD CPUs are getting equally shafted. Even those who bought a brand new Intel i7 CPU between 2013 and 2014 is likely to miss out.
Fortunately, frustrated modders have already come to the rescue. You can download a DLL from Github, thanks to LibreVR, that overwrites the compatibility check and unlocks the two modes for all owners. And while users are thankful for the workaround, others have pointed out that it means Vertigo Games are largely getting away scot free.
It’s not as if the particulars behind this arrangement were announced beforehand. A month before the game’s release, Vertigo Games were telling users that Arizona Sunshine would run on an Intel i5 CPU, but that they should really upgrade:
Of course, there’s a big difference between better performance and having access to content. None of the prior announcements on Steam mentioned that these modes would be limited to certain CPUs, however.
I contacted Vertigo Games, asking whether they were sticking by the exclusivity and whether it was a precondition set by Intel in exchange for their support during development. While they didn’t respond to those questions, they posted an update announcing that they would be “unlocking these modes immediately to all players”.
“We wanted you to feel it was worth it, but we also wanted everybody to be able to play these modes eventually,” the developer wrote. “These surprise game modes were meant to be a reward for those players with high-end VR systems who were looking for the most immersive experience possible … we are unlocking these modes to all players immediately via an automatic update, and we hope you enjoy them.”
It’s a speedy reversal, but given the swift and unanimous reaction from fans it’s understandable. Vertigo deserve some credit for reversing their decision in such a speedy manner, but you have to wonder what the thought process was like that allowed this situation to arise in the first place.
Comments
16 responses to “VR Shooter Adds New Modes Only For Certain CPUs, Quickly Backpedals”
I imagine that thought process consisted almost entirely of the sound of an old-fashioned cash-register bell.
I don’t think thought process came into it. In this case Vertigo was most likely just a puppet with Intel’s slimy hand up its arse.
In light of http://www.polygon.com/2016/12/8/13891322/vr-funding-oculus-vive I feel bad about jumping to this conclusion.
Seems like a bit of a dick move.
I think I will remove them from VR devs to follow and stick with my 4.3GHz i5 4690k
If it was for technical limitations id understand (like 4K media on newer architecture) but its not
Such a stupid move by Intel. If it wanted exclusivity it should have paid for the whole thing from the start, same as Xbox with Rise of the Tomb Raider. This is like time-exclusive DLC that Playstation gets before Xbox, but obviously PC folk ain’t taking none of that shit.
Intel has nothing to do with it. Its completell illogical that intel would do such a thing. Take off the tinfoil hat buddy.
If Intel had nothing to do with it I would eat my tinfoil hat!
By all means provide the evidence you have that intel is directly involved, Ill wait.
Er…
“Working with Intel allowed us to create even more content than we originally planned, including these modes and the physics systems in the game, making Arizona Sunshine one of the richest VR experiences possible. We want to give 5th, 6th and 7th gen Intel® Core™ i7 owners first glimpse into these additional modes, but they’ll be available March 6, 2017 to everyone who owns the game.”
Working with Intel = Intel directly involved.
Now if there is any other CREDIBLE reason that a developer would voluntarily wall off content from purchasers, I’ll consider it. It seems though, that “We want to give 5th, 6th and 7th gen Intel® Core™ i7 owners first glimpse into these additional modes” = if you want to experience these modes before 6 March 2017, go upgrade your CPU to the latest Intel(R) CPU guys!
You might say tinfoil hat. I say commercial partnership.
Could always be something more benign, like they thought it would be a nice bonus to roll shit out to the chipsets they know for a fact work best, right when they know it works, then rolling out to other chipsets once they’re done testing. The code at the moment seems to just be a validation check that the CPU is one that they know works. Disabling that means others ‘can’ work, just not that they’ve been tested to the satisfaction of the devs.
Ill-conceived attempt to please the users of the hardware the devs themselves prefer, without any particular endorsement, sign-off, or even knowledge on Intel’s part, whose PR folks are quite possibly pinching the bridges of their noses in exasperation right now.
I guess possible, but I still prefer my conspiracy theory 🙂
thats not the evidence i asked for, I asked for evidence that intel directly told them to restrict the games to certain cpu’s of which you have none.
Just loony conspiracy theories that are idiotic and illogical.
Yeah, some people will claim the sky is green when it is clearly blue 🙂
It’s brown in Delhi.
Then why was an Intel Rep handing out Arizona Sunshine branded Google Cardboard headsets at PAX Australia???
The so-called master race in gaming is at it again.