That isn’t really a bug, bots aren’t supposed to inherit from the SimpleVRCharacter, you are introducing additional overhead to them by using that as a character base.
I “could” add a variable that you could set that would skip the headset positional checking in the simple character, but I feel like that would promote bad behavior?
By using the simple character you are adding in two motion controllers, a camera, and some overridden movement logic, all of which shouldn’t be in a bot if you want to keep best performance.
The “correct” thing to do would be to use a standard character with animations and run it like any normal bot in engine.
That being said, if you really really really want to use the simple character for bots for some reason, I can make the hmd locking able to be toggled on it. I have it toggled on the VRCharacter for testing reasons.
Edit Added in a bSkipHMDChecks variable to the SimpleCharacterMovementComponent, it can be used for debugging with the simplecharacter anyway (It needs some love, the VRCharacter is more feature complete). It has been merged into every version from 4.15 - 4.17.
I would still suggest that you take the time to use a normal character for bots instead.