Oculus and Zenimax are still going at it — this morning, the company behind Oculus Rift released a statement in response to Zenimax’s claims last week that Doom co-creator John Carmack had stolen “technology and know-how” when he left Zenimax for Oculus last year.
Although the battle hasn’t gone to court yet, neither side seems willing to step back from the fight. Here’s Oculus’s full statement:
We are disappointed but not surprised by Zenimax’s actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false. In the meantime, we would like to clarify a few key points:
- There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products.
- John Carmack did not take any intellectual property from Zenimax.
- Zenimax has misstated the purposes and language of the Zenimax non-disclosure agreement that Palmer Luckey signed.
- A key reason that John permanently left Zenimax in August of 2013 was that Zenimax prevented John from working on VR, and stopped investing in VR games across the company.
- Zenimax cancelled VR support for Doom 3 BFG when Oculus refused Zenimax’s demands for a non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus.
- Zenimax did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, Zenimax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has Zenimax now made these claims through its lawyers.
- Despite the fact that the full source code for the Oculus SDK is available online (developer.oculusvr.com), Zenimax has never identified any ‘stolen’ code or technology.
Comments
12 responses to “The Oculus Vs Zenimax Battle Is Heating Up”
Cliffy B just said it best on Twitter: “Go home Zenimax, you’re drunk”.
Way back in the day Volvo designed the 3 point seatbelt and made it free for anyone to use. These days anyone sues anyone over the shape of the corners of their smartphones. I guess the hopes of a Star Trek utopia where people work together for the betterment of humankind rather than personal greed is increasingly decreasing
Decreasing? I lost that hope a few years ago. I think that point marked the transition to ‘old and grumpy’ for me.
Forget about a Polio vaccine type good will gesture in the 21st century. There is just too much money to be made, plus the scientists do not pay for the research. unfortunately it’s a bi-product of the logarithmic scaling of effort required to get that next step in advancement.
Well, we have to hit rock bottom and go through world war 3 before that utopia so I’d say we’re a little behind but still it’s still doable 🙂
Although these seems so open and shut, I have a terrible feeling this will be dragged out. I can only hope that facebook has some outstanding lawyers when it comes to IP(read:mark zuckerberg vs winklevoss twins case) so they can win this and get back to developing.
Facebook will smack these guys so hard their mothers will feel it in their ovaries…
This is so pointless, when Oculus was not profitable, Zenimax stayed away thinking it is a bad investment. When Facebook bought it for $2 Billion they realise they lost their opportunity and decided to do some cash grab while they can.
Exactly. Shameful cashgrab is shameful.
didnt human head also say that zenimax stopped paying for prey 2 after human head refused to be brought out by zenimax
Someone release something so the general public can buy it. Then we will see if all this VR hype is warranted and its what the general actually want.
I was hyped about Oculus a year ago? Six months ago?
Now Ive moved on. Sick of waiting.
Someone release something!
The internet is public, so is the Oculus website. The DK has been available for some time to the general public, so quit your misinformed whining.
Unless you meant retail. Retail and the general public are completely different, though.
You can buy the OR right now, if you want to.
BTW, WTF is up with the ‘ERROR, you are posting comments too quickly message’ coming up for every frigging post on Kotaku?
Yeah, Im aware of the dev kits.
Im talking about going proper retail.