Adding virtual reality (VR) support to a videogame not specifically designed for the technology can be a big undertaking and ROCKFISH Games knows this better than most. After a successful Kickstarter for EVERSPACE in 2015, the roguelike shooter launched the following year with VR support added in 2017. The studio saw crowdfunding success again in 2019 for sequel EVERSPACE 2 but there was no mention of VR. The studio has recently broached the subject confirming that VR support isn’t currently being considered.
In a mailing this week ROCKFISH Games knew it was a question on the minds of VR fans, saying: “Now, before some of you ask: We still haven’t decided if we will support VR at some point. All we can say is that based on the experience from the predecessor, supporting VR is a ton of work for many reasons (like overhauling the UI, rebalancing the game, optimizing to demanding VR specifications)”.
Citing various challenges and issues such as: “quite a lot of VR players miss or have trouble altering graphic settings in games with optional VR support, resulting in negative reviews and complaints about performance issues in VR, which of course hurt overall sales,” one of the biggest reasons simple comes down to where to invest funds.
“It would actually be hard to justify to our entire community if we spent a lot of development resources exclusively on a feature for a comparatively small group of players,” the studio explains.
However, ROCKFISH Games didn’t completely close the book on adding VR further down the road: “Therefore, we decided to look at VR as a separate platform that requires a solid business case to make it worthwhile to support. Long story short, EVERSPACE 2 for VR is currently not on our list, but who knows what kind of deal might happen in the future…?”
EVERSPACE 2 was slated for an Early Access launch on Steam in September but the studio has now pushed that back to December 2020 due to Cyberpunk 2077 and Outriders. If ROCKFISH Games do decide to add VR support then VRFocus will let you know, for the time being, there’s always EVERSPACE.