7 ms·

John Carmack's former employer claims he stole tech for Oculus VR when he left

144 points by pytrin 12y ago

Dirlewanger 12y ago
Hmm...sounds quite hairy, and quite likely that Carmack did, to some extent, leverage existing proprietary id software to assist in developing Rift's SDK or whatever before he left. I mean, who wouldn't? But at the same time, you'd think someone like Carmack would be aware of the murkiness of using company IP to make something...and then taking that something to another company.
- homulilly 12y ago
  This looks more like typical tech lawyer company bullshit where they claim that to basically own your brain while you're employed including anything you did during your time off.
wdewind 12y ago
> To be completely clear, Zenimax is claiming that John Carmack took software with him to Oculus VR that he developed while still an employee at id Software (owned by Zenimax). But: > ZeniMax provided necessary VR technology and other valuable assistance to Palmer Luckey and other Oculus employees in 2012 and 2013 to make the Oculus Rift a viable VR product, superior to other VR market offerings. My guess: it sounds like John Carmack began an informal relationship with Luckey and Oculus, and possibly wrote some code for or advised them while he was still at iD. If so, Zenimax is likely legally in the right. Yikes.
- clavalle 12y ago
  I find it hard to imagine that an industry veteran like Carmack would write code for another company while employed with another and proving some bit of proprietary advice was incorporated into the product would be difficult. My guess is that Zenimax wants to get access to the source to go on a fishing expedition.
  - taiki 12y ago
    Not unprecedented though. Carmack did once advise Ken Silverman on using sectors with his 3D engine. Which later became the Build Engine.
    - z3phyr 12y ago
      Correct me, Build engine is 2.5D. Isn't it?
      - taiki 12y ago
        The exact nature of various FPS gaming engines from that era kind of gives me a massive headache. Still, the point stands that this isn't unprecedented. John Carmack's has, in the past, just helped out potential competitors before.
  - angersock 12y ago
    Are you familiar with Carmack at all? Like, ever talked with him? He's friendly and is exactly the sort of engineer that helps teach others how to do things--just look at the GPL releases of all the old Quake stuff when it came out (back in the 90s!).
  - stonemetal 12y ago
    It seems like Carmack produced Oculus demos of Id software before he left Id. May be he worked with the Oculus guys to support that effort and talked them into making changes to make those demos work. It would be rather unsurprising to me, close working relationships between game studios and hardware vendors (like graphics card, and console companies) happen all the time.
  - justin66 12y ago
    > I find it hard to imagine that an industry veteran like Carmack would write code for another company while employed with another and proving some bit of proprietary advice was incorporated into the product would be difficult. Back in the day id programmers shared snippets of code with whoever they wanted - they didn't need to ask any corporate overseer for permission. There were a few little bits found when the GarageGames/Tribes engine code was first released, for example. (pretty sure they got those lines of code from Brian Hook, but it's been a long time...)
- lawnchair_larry 12y ago
  He was very openly employed by both companies at the same time. Eventually he left iD because they didn't like sharing him.
- VikingCoder 12y ago
  > provided That's the key word, isn't it. If the Oculus guys weren't absolutely clear about who owned what, and what the patents were, then they're screwed. By which I mean, they will for sure be embroiled in a long and costly legal battle, unless they settle.
clavalle 12y ago
>The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax. John Carmack's 'know-how' is owned by ZeniMax? Absurd.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  "Trade secrets" might be a better term there.
  - lawnchair_larry 12y ago
    It's not a trade secrets case. Zenimax wasn't in the same business. Zenimax are claiming that they own everything he did while employed, thus, Oculus IP is zenimax IP. Typical tech company lawyer BS.
    - Touche 12y ago
      Not just tech company, anything that involves leveraging knowledge workers.
    - couradical 12y ago
      This is why you sign an exclusion clause when you start anywhere. I don't know why this is so crazy. Salaried employees are paid regardless of hours worked, which means that you are technically always employed, regardless if you're expected to be working. If you're paid hourly, then there's a clear demarcation between working hours and not, being a salaried employee blurs that line. That's why many states have regulations as to who can be salaried and how.
      - gress 12y ago
        That's one interpretation, and one that the lawyers would like us to buy into. Another is that this is simply morally wrong, and we shouldn't accept that simply being salaried implies that all intellectual work you do is owned by the employer. This is a matter of convention, expectation, and interpretation, not rules. Powerful corporations are fighting for the interpretation that most benefits them at the cost of those who are weaker. That's not crazy; it's wrong.
aw3c2 12y ago
Actual source is http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230394810... which sadly is behind a paywall. So here is a Google Cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... or as more permanent archive http://archive.today/fz5Ge http://archive.today/fz5Ge
NDizzle 12y ago
Smart people should stop leveraging the amount of information in their brain. That's the property of some corporation! What was he thinking?!
- daenz 12y ago
  It sounds like he actually wrote software, but yes, this line seriously bugs me: > The proprietary ... know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee ... are owned by ZeniMax.
  - waps 12y ago
    I think a little CEO is real mad that 1) He refused John Carmack's pitch for a new project. Stupid. 2) That got his best employee to quit the company and start a new one. Double stupid. 3) That new company he has no rights to was worth $2 billion a year and a half later. Management-level stupid. (note I don't care what it's "value" is, someone paid 2 billion for it, that makes it worth 2 billion) And now of course, the lawyer wants some money. It isn't fair that something I could have had but didn't want was sold for $2 billion ! Obviously they owe me for the idea ! I have a 2 year old daughter that has this sort of behaviour too. I also have a 5 year old daughter, who has grown out of it (that wasn't easy, let me tell you). I'd expect the CEO of a legal company to ... Dammit I almost got through that last sentence without laughing ... and crying.
    - angersock 12y ago
      Carmack didn't start Oculus, though he did probably provide technical mentorship.
  - NDizzle 12y ago
    Yes, there may actually be some legal standing. I've typed and erased this response 3 times because I tend to wander, but the I think what irks me the most about things like this is that they will end up concentrating on some physical object, like some code that he created in his spare time while still under their employment. They won't even acknowledge the fact that this is a titan of productivity and a genius programmer who could probably conjure up anything he's written in the past N decades given an afternoon.
cromwellian 12y ago
This is what happens when you sell your company to lawyers (CEO/founder of Zenimax)
chollida1 12y ago
> In August 2012, ZeniMax began seeking compensation for the intellectual property, according to people familiar with the discussions. Negotiations continued on and off for nearly six months, with Oculus eventually offering ZeniMax a small equity stake, but no deal was reached, the people said. This past summer, Mr. Carmack joined Oculus, and earlier this year, five ZeniMax employees joined Oculus, the people said. In February, ZeniMax asked Mr. Carmack to disclose all of the virtual-reality inventions he developed while working at ZeniMax, one of the people said. it sounds to me like they are saying that John Carmack did VR work for Oculus while still at Id and then took his tech demo with him when he left Id/ZeniMax. This seems like the kind of thing John had done in the past and no one cared when they were still Id software. Once they sold themselves, it seems like the parent company no longer considers this type of activity to be ok. or put another way, it sounds like shades of Sergey Aleynikov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov), where a programmer does something he always does but once he leaves the company the company decides that they weren't cool with it after all.
drawkbox 12y ago
A gaming giant going against a gaming legend, not sure if Zenimax thought this one through. Also doesn't Carmack still own a portion of id software and thus Zenimax? Carmack tried to get them to pursue VR but they didn't want to. Sounds like a bratty response to a bad decision.
- gnoway 12y ago
  Zenimax owns id, not the other way around.
NoPiece 12y ago
When you are acquired for $2 billion, know that there will be hundreds of lawyers looking to find a way to sue you and get some of that Facebook stock.
- xcolour 12y ago
  I think it's worth pointing out that ZeniMax has been pursuing this since 2012, long before the Facebook acquisition. At least according to this article on ArsTechnica: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/05/id-software-parent-stakes-claim-on-carmacks-oculus-rift-technology/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/05/id-software-parent-sta...
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    it might be true that they were pursuing it earlier, however, according to the WSJ article that is the source for all this, the lawyers didn't get involved until after the Facebook announcement. The letters from ZeniMax's lawyers came after Facebook struck its deal to acquire Oculus, part of the company's efforts to leap from a social-media platform to a major player in the race with Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to be at the forefront of Internet use. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846.html http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230394810...
pachydermic 12y ago
Ugh, Zenimax legal is the worst. I mean, maybe they have a claim - Carmack was probably working on Oculus stuff while employed there - but I find the idea that businessmen own everything a programmer works on just because he's an employee abhorrent. Remember the whole Scrolls debacle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolls_%28video_game%29#Bethesda_lawsuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolls_%28video_game%29#Bethes... Apparently that was Bethesda Softworks, not Zenimax... but I wonder who was really behind it.
- DerpDerpDerp 12y ago
  Or Carmack pitched an early version of the technology to Zenimax and subsequently worked on parts of what was eventually used by Oculus during work hours. Both pitching it as a work product and working on it during work hours gives Zenimax some standing to talk about it being done by one of their employees. It's not really impossible to conceive that they might actually have a valid claim.
  - loup-vaillant 12y ago
    To have a valid claim, Carmack must have had copied some code or data he produced during those hours. If he merely recreated the work from memory, Zenimax have nothing. Unless recreating non-patented work from memory is actually forbidden? That would be horrible.
    - gamerdonkey 12y ago
      > Unless recreating non-patented work from memory is actually forbidden? That would be horrible. Here lies the black magic of the Non-Compete Agreement.
      - loup-vaillant 12y ago
        Yeah, forgot about that. Such Faustian clauses are evil, and shouldn't be possible in the first place. Nevertheless, this doesn't look like a Non-Compete Agreement violation, or we would probably have seen those words in the article. My guess is, Carmack haven't signed one (75% probability).
ensmotko 12y ago
Carmack's response: "No work I have ever done has been patented. Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR." [0] [0] https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/461918500307472384 https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/461918500307472384
- kevingadd 12y ago
  Unless part of his agreements with Zenimax required him to provide all necessary assistance and documentation so that they can patent his work, which many agreements do...
  - jamesaguilar 12y ago
    Also, they may own it as a trade secret rather than as a patented process. Or, further, it's possible that code that John is working on now is a derivative work of code owned by Zenimax. We won't know until the facts come out.
callesgg 12y ago
Do they/companies in general have no notion of how bad stuff like this makes them look. Either they should fire the people handling PR or talk to them before doing dumb shit.
- robotresearcher 12y ago
  They just can't resist the pile of money that Facebook paid for Oculus. Getting a slice of that might be more profitable than writing new software, unfortunately. Goodwill be damned.
rageear 12y ago
I guess this means that ZeniMax owns all the code that Carmack wrote for Armadillo Aerospace, too. Oh right, AA isn't worth $2B.
l33tfr4gg3r 12y ago
Carmack be quaking with rage at those heretics as they try to spell doom for Oculus.
snorkel 12y ago
For those who bemoaned the Facebook acquisition, now you can be reassured that papa Facebook has deep enough pockets to make the patent troll go away.
grayclhn 12y ago
Teenager me would have had no way to process this. Adult me's struggling too.
madrox 12y ago
Honestly, the details in something like this don't matter. ZeniMax is betting on Oculus not wanting a spurious legal claim holding up the closing of the Facebook deal. Oculus leaders don't really care, because they just want their big payday. Oculus will settle, ZeniMax will get some money, and we'll all move on.
chazu 12y ago
This reminds me of _Count Zero_. The whole plot about a scientist leaving one corporate nation-state to work for another, and having to be extracted by a team of commandos so his old bosses don't kill him.
nemof 12y ago
so here's the agreement Oculus allegedly broke: http://recode.net/2014/05/01/heres-the-agreement-oculus-allegedly-broke-according-to-zenimax/ http://recode.net/2014/05/01/heres-the-agreement-oculus-alle...
mcv 12y ago
I can certainly understand why Carmack left. Doesn't sound like his kind of company.

144 points by pytrin 12y ago

Hmm...sounds quite hairy, and quite likely that Carmack did, to some extent, leverage existing proprietary id software to assist in developing Rift's SDK or whatever before he left. I mean, who wouldn't? But at the same time, you'd think someone like Carmack would be aware of the murkiness of using company IP to make something...and then taking that something to another company.

homulilly 12y ago
This looks more like typical tech lawyer company bullshit where they claim that to basically own your brain while you're employed including anything you did during your time off.

wdewind 12y ago

> To be completely clear, Zenimax is claiming that John Carmack took software with him to Oculus VR that he developed while still an employee at id Software (owned by Zenimax). But: > ZeniMax provided necessary VR technology and other valuable assistance to Palmer Luckey and other Oculus employees in 2012 and 2013 to make the Oculus Rift a viable VR product, superior to other VR market offerings. My guess: it sounds like John Carmack began an informal relationship with Luckey and Oculus, and possibly wrote some code for or advised them while he was still at iD. If so, Zenimax is likely legally in the right. Yikes.

clavalle 12y ago
I find it hard to imagine that an industry veteran like Carmack would write code for another company while employed with another and proving some bit of proprietary advice was incorporated into the product would be difficult. My guess is that Zenimax wants to get access to the source to go on a fishing expedition.
- taiki 12y ago
  Not unprecedented though. Carmack did once advise Ken Silverman on using sectors with his 3D engine. Which later became the Build Engine.
  - z3phyr 12y ago
    Correct me, Build engine is 2.5D. Isn't it?
    - taiki 12y ago
      The exact nature of various FPS gaming engines from that era kind of gives me a massive headache. Still, the point stands that this isn't unprecedented. John Carmack's has, in the past, just helped out potential competitors before.
- angersock 12y ago
  Are you familiar with Carmack at all? Like, ever talked with him? He's friendly and is exactly the sort of engineer that helps teach others how to do things--just look at the GPL releases of all the old Quake stuff when it came out (back in the 90s!).
- stonemetal 12y ago
  It seems like Carmack produced Oculus demos of Id software before he left Id. May be he worked with the Oculus guys to support that effort and talked them into making changes to make those demos work. It would be rather unsurprising to me, close working relationships between game studios and hardware vendors (like graphics card, and console companies) happen all the time.
- justin66 12y ago
  > I find it hard to imagine that an industry veteran like Carmack would write code for another company while employed with another and proving some bit of proprietary advice was incorporated into the product would be difficult. Back in the day id programmers shared snippets of code with whoever they wanted - they didn't need to ask any corporate overseer for permission. There were a few little bits found when the GarageGames/Tribes engine code was first released, for example. (pretty sure they got those lines of code from Brian Hook, but it's been a long time...)
lawnchair_larry 12y ago
He was very openly employed by both companies at the same time. Eventually he left iD because they didn't like sharing him.
VikingCoder 12y ago
> provided That's the key word, isn't it. If the Oculus guys weren't absolutely clear about who owned what, and what the patents were, then they're screwed. By which I mean, they will for sure be embroiled in a long and costly legal battle, unless they settle.

clavalle 12y ago

>The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax. John Carmack's 'know-how' is owned by ZeniMax? Absurd.

ceejayoz 12y ago
"Trade secrets" might be a better term there.
- lawnchair_larry 12y ago
  It's not a trade secrets case. Zenimax wasn't in the same business. Zenimax are claiming that they own everything he did while employed, thus, Oculus IP is zenimax IP. Typical tech company lawyer BS.
  - Touche 12y ago
    Not just tech company, anything that involves leveraging knowledge workers.
  - couradical 12y ago
    This is why you sign an exclusion clause when you start anywhere. I don't know why this is so crazy. Salaried employees are paid regardless of hours worked, which means that you are technically always employed, regardless if you're expected to be working. If you're paid hourly, then there's a clear demarcation between working hours and not, being a salaried employee blurs that line. That's why many states have regulations as to who can be salaried and how.
    - gress 12y ago
      That's one interpretation, and one that the lawyers would like us to buy into. Another is that this is simply morally wrong, and we shouldn't accept that simply being salaried implies that all intellectual work you do is owned by the employer. This is a matter of convention, expectation, and interpretation, not rules. Powerful corporations are fighting for the interpretation that most benefits them at the cost of those who are weaker. That's not crazy; it's wrong.

aw3c2 12y ago

Actual source is http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230394810... which sadly is behind a paywall. So here is a Google Cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... or as more permanent archive http://archive.today/fz5Ge http://archive.today/fz5Ge

NDizzle 12y ago

Smart people should stop leveraging the amount of information in their brain. That's the property of some corporation! What was he thinking?!

daenz 12y ago
It sounds like he actually wrote software, but yes, this line seriously bugs me: > The proprietary ... know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee ... are owned by ZeniMax.
- waps 12y ago
  I think a little CEO is real mad that 1) He refused John Carmack's pitch for a new project. Stupid. 2) That got his best employee to quit the company and start a new one. Double stupid. 3) That new company he has no rights to was worth $2 billion a year and a half later. Management-level stupid. (note I don't care what it's "value" is, someone paid 2 billion for it, that makes it worth 2 billion) And now of course, the lawyer wants some money. It isn't fair that something I could have had but didn't want was sold for $2 billion ! Obviously they owe me for the idea ! I have a 2 year old daughter that has this sort of behaviour too. I also have a 5 year old daughter, who has grown out of it (that wasn't easy, let me tell you). I'd expect the CEO of a legal company to ... Dammit I almost got through that last sentence without laughing ... and crying.
  - angersock 12y ago
    Carmack didn't start Oculus, though he did probably provide technical mentorship.
- NDizzle 12y ago
  Yes, there may actually be some legal standing. I've typed and erased this response 3 times because I tend to wander, but the I think what irks me the most about things like this is that they will end up concentrating on some physical object, like some code that he created in his spare time while still under their employment. They won't even acknowledge the fact that this is a titan of productivity and a genius programmer who could probably conjure up anything he's written in the past N decades given an afternoon.

cromwellian 12y ago

This is what happens when you sell your company to lawyers (CEO/founder of Zenimax)

chollida1 12y ago

> In August 2012, ZeniMax began seeking compensation for the intellectual property, according to people familiar with the discussions. Negotiations continued on and off for nearly six months, with Oculus eventually offering ZeniMax a small equity stake, but no deal was reached, the people said. This past summer, Mr. Carmack joined Oculus, and earlier this year, five ZeniMax employees joined Oculus, the people said. In February, ZeniMax asked Mr. Carmack to disclose all of the virtual-reality inventions he developed while working at ZeniMax, one of the people said. it sounds to me like they are saying that John Carmack did VR work for Oculus while still at Id and then took his tech demo with him when he left Id/ZeniMax. This seems like the kind of thing John had done in the past and no one cared when they were still Id software. Once they sold themselves, it seems like the parent company no longer considers this type of activity to be ok. or put another way, it sounds like shades of Sergey Aleynikov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov), where a programmer does something he always does but once he leaves the company the company decides that they weren't cool with it after all.

drawkbox 12y ago

A gaming giant going against a gaming legend, not sure if Zenimax thought this one through. Also doesn't Carmack still own a portion of id software and thus Zenimax? Carmack tried to get them to pursue VR but they didn't want to. Sounds like a bratty response to a bad decision.

gnoway 12y ago
Zenimax owns id, not the other way around.

NoPiece 12y ago

When you are acquired for $2 billion, know that there will be hundreds of lawyers looking to find a way to sue you and get some of that Facebook stock.

xcolour 12y ago
I think it's worth pointing out that ZeniMax has been pursuing this since 2012, long before the Facebook acquisition. At least according to this article on ArsTechnica: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/05/id-software-parent-stakes-claim-on-carmacks-oculus-rift-technology/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/05/id-software-parent-sta...
- NoPiece 12y ago
  it might be true that they were pursuing it earlier, however, according to the WSJ article that is the source for all this, the lawyers didn't get involved until after the Facebook announcement. The letters from ZeniMax's lawyers came after Facebook struck its deal to acquire Oculus, part of the company's efforts to leap from a social-media platform to a major player in the race with Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to be at the forefront of Internet use. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846.html http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230394810...

pachydermic 12y ago

Ugh, Zenimax legal is the worst. I mean, maybe they have a claim - Carmack was probably working on Oculus stuff while employed there - but I find the idea that businessmen own everything a programmer works on just because he's an employee abhorrent. Remember the whole Scrolls debacle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolls_%28video_game%29#Bethesda_lawsuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolls_%28video_game%29#Bethes... Apparently that was Bethesda Softworks, not Zenimax... but I wonder who was really behind it.

DerpDerpDerp 12y ago
Or Carmack pitched an early version of the technology to Zenimax and subsequently worked on parts of what was eventually used by Oculus during work hours. Both pitching it as a work product and working on it during work hours gives Zenimax some standing to talk about it being done by one of their employees. It's not really impossible to conceive that they might actually have a valid claim.
- loup-vaillant 12y ago
  To have a valid claim, Carmack must have had copied some code or data he produced during those hours. If he merely recreated the work from memory, Zenimax have nothing. Unless recreating non-patented work from memory is actually forbidden? That would be horrible.
  - gamerdonkey 12y ago
    > Unless recreating non-patented work from memory is actually forbidden? That would be horrible. Here lies the black magic of the Non-Compete Agreement.
    - loup-vaillant 12y ago
      Yeah, forgot about that. Such Faustian clauses are evil, and shouldn't be possible in the first place. Nevertheless, this doesn't look like a Non-Compete Agreement violation, or we would probably have seen those words in the article. My guess is, Carmack haven't signed one (75% probability).

ensmotko 12y ago

Carmack's response: "No work I have ever done has been patented. Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR." [0] [0] https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/461918500307472384 https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/461918500307472384

kevingadd 12y ago
Unless part of his agreements with Zenimax required him to provide all necessary assistance and documentation so that they can patent his work, which many agreements do...
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  Also, they may own it as a trade secret rather than as a patented process. Or, further, it's possible that code that John is working on now is a derivative work of code owned by Zenimax. We won't know until the facts come out.

callesgg 12y ago

Do they/companies in general have no notion of how bad stuff like this makes them look. Either they should fire the people handling PR or talk to them before doing dumb shit.

robotresearcher 12y ago
They just can't resist the pile of money that Facebook paid for Oculus. Getting a slice of that might be more profitable than writing new software, unfortunately. Goodwill be damned.

rageear 12y ago

I guess this means that ZeniMax owns all the code that Carmack wrote for Armadillo Aerospace, too. Oh right, AA isn't worth $2B.

l33tfr4gg3r 12y ago

Carmack be quaking with rage at those heretics as they try to spell doom for Oculus.

snorkel 12y ago

For those who bemoaned the Facebook acquisition, now you can be reassured that papa Facebook has deep enough pockets to make the patent troll go away.

grayclhn 12y ago

Teenager me would have had no way to process this. Adult me's struggling too.

madrox 12y ago

Honestly, the details in something like this don't matter. ZeniMax is betting on Oculus not wanting a spurious legal claim holding up the closing of the Facebook deal. Oculus leaders don't really care, because they just want their big payday. Oculus will settle, ZeniMax will get some money, and we'll all move on.

chazu 12y ago

This reminds me of _Count Zero_. The whole plot about a scientist leaving one corporate nation-state to work for another, and having to be extracted by a team of commandos so his old bosses don't kill him.

nemof 12y ago

so here's the agreement Oculus allegedly broke: http://recode.net/2014/05/01/heres-the-agreement-oculus-allegedly-broke-according-to-zenimax/ http://recode.net/2014/05/01/heres-the-agreement-oculus-alle...

mcv 12y ago

I can certainly understand why Carmack left. Doesn't sound like his kind of company.