Setting Virtual Contact Sensor state via MQTT/MQTT-Bridge

I am running into a wall with a project I am working on. I am trying to use MQTT/smartthings-mqtt-bridge to set the state of a virtual contact sensor.

Is the command ‘contact’ read-only?

I have a real contact sensor, it reports as

contact:closed
contact:open

When i try to issue either command to a virtual contact sensor, it never changes. The smartthings sample one has a open/closed press action, but trying to set it via MQTT never changes the state.

Is there something I am missing, or does ST not allow this?

my log looks like this:

Received device event from bridge: [name:Office Window, value:close, command:true, type:contact]