Oculus is continuously improving and adding new features to its online store, the biggest being the recent Rift Core 2.0 and Dash. Today, the company will be rolling out a major change, not one that users may notice right away but important for indie developers, the removal of Gallery Apps.
The Gallery Apps section was introduced over a year ago as an avenue for developers to release content that might not have met the criteria for a full release or even Early Access. This meant the section was less curated by Oculus, sometimes offering gems whilst others were definitely rough around the edges. The sole intention of the section was to get more content into a market that needed as much as possible.
Today that’s no longer the case with Oculus reasoning in a statement: “We’ve seen the value of the “Gallery” designation decrease and believe the platform has evolved to a point where it is no longer necessary.”
What does this mean for developers? Well those that had content in Gallery Apps will find them appear under their respective Store categories: Games, Apps, Entertainment, or Early Access which they chose during submission. “We believe this update will benefit all developers, adds Oculus. “By grouping all apps by genre and category, people can easily get a complete picture of all available applications.
Whether indie developers will necessarily agree is another matter, as these titles will now be grouped among a much larger selection of experiences, all vying for players attention. Naturally, videogames that are more highly polished or offer more gameplay due to the studio being larger will dominate over those smaller experiences.
The update itself is completely automatic across the entire platform (for both Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR), so developers won’t need to do anything, their project will just be moved. As Oculus continues to update the store, VRFocus will let you know.