by chollida1 on 5/1/14, 4:38 PM
> 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), 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.
by pachydermic on 5/1/14, 4:56 PM
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#Bethes... Apparently that was Bethesda Softworks, not Zenimax... but I wonder who was really behind it.
by NDizzle on 5/1/14, 4:18 PM
Smart people should stop leveraging the amount of information in their brain. That's the property of some corporation! What was he thinking?!
by clavalle on 5/1/14, 4:11 PM
>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.
by ensmotko on 5/1/14, 5:27 PM
by cromwellian on 5/1/14, 4:22 PM
This is what happens when you sell your company to lawyers (CEO/founder of Zenimax)
by NoPiece on 5/1/14, 4:42 PM
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.
by wdewind on 5/1/14, 4:10 PM
> 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.
by aw3c2 on 5/1/14, 4:12 PM
by rageear on 5/1/14, 5:37 PM
I guess this means that ZeniMax owns all the code that Carmack wrote for Armadillo Aerospace, too.
Oh right, AA isn't worth $2B.
by Dirlewanger on 5/1/14, 4:10 PM
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.
by drawkbox on 5/1/14, 4:41 PM
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.
by snorkel on 5/1/14, 5:51 PM
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.
by callesgg on 5/1/14, 5:36 PM
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.
by madrox on 5/1/14, 6:07 PM
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.
by chazu on 5/1/14, 6:54 PM
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.
by nemof on 5/1/14, 9:13 PM
by mcv on 5/1/14, 11:01 PM
I can certainly understand why Carmack left. Doesn't sound like his kind of company.
by grayclhn on 5/1/14, 6:04 PM
Teenager me would have had no way to process this. Adult me's struggling too.