FAQ - Oculus

So… What's with exclusivity?



First of all we’d like to thank the multitudes of both Vive and Oculus supporters who have expressed their passionate opinions in the last few days. We love their continued interest and plan to support both platforms with an excellent game. Giant Cop is, and was always going to be, a multiplatform title. As we are a small team, we really only have the resources to develop for one platform first, with the idea of optimizing and developing for others after. We thought that first release product was going to be Vive, but after business conversations with Oculus, and the excitement they showed for the product, it became clear that it was going to be more beneficial for everyone involved to make Oculus the first full release.



What is the reasoning for changing your mind?



There were a lot of very practical reasons:



Market footprint. There are just more Oculus units out there right now. As a game developer it makes sense to focus where the most number of customers can be found.

Timing of release. We planned to release late November if all went well. Oculus is also planning to release their Touch controllers in the latter half of this year, so the timing works out really well for us as we can piggyback on the launch marketing of the Touch release.

Partnership. As a small studio this partnership offers us more opportunities than you can imagine. Going to market alone as a small studio with an original IP is scary, difficult, and extremely risky. Being a premier title with Oculus really gives us the additional backing that we just ultimately wouldn't have if we went it alone.



Didn't you sell the game for vive on humble bundle?



Yes and no, the technical demo was built on the Vive, as at the time we had no touch controllers or psvr kits. When the humble bundle went up we gave away the technical demo (that only worked on vive and was displayed as such), plus a 50% coupon to thank early adopters in VR for the full game. We purposely did not put a headset on the humble store page as we knew we hadn't fully committed, but totally can see why people would be upset. That's why we are working with humble bundle and we're going to refund anyone that feels like they've been misled.



But it was working on the Vive, why stop?



Our tech demo works on the vive. This was very early test code that has since evolved and is just a very small sliver of what the full game will offer. That being said, we are not stopping. We will continue to work on vive and other platforms as we progress but have decided to focus on Oculus at this time to make the best possible game for that system.



Didn't valve give you a dev kit?



Of course they did. Valve is awesome and their developer support is great. It is par for the course for hardware manufacturers to provide dev kits to developers to make our lives easier when developing. If we never got a dev kit we would never release the game on that platform.



What's up with saying it was our idea for exclusivity at upload VR?



This was a simple misunderstanding. Oculus wanted an exclusivity window for a short time, and our reasoning was “well it would take 2-3 months after release for us even to perfect a vive version” and that's how the decision was made.



So what's the plan then?



Currently the goal is to release in 2017 on Oculus + Touch first, followed by the Vive afterwards, with plans to bring it to PSVR.

