Zenimax Media, the parent company of both Bethesda Softworks and Id Software, has sent legal letters to Oculus and its new parent Facebook alleging that storied Doom programmer John Carmack aided in the development and creation of Oculus Rift technology while he was still with Zenimax, giving the company claim to at least part of the headset's intellectual property.
As reported this morning by the Wall Street Journal, Zenimax alleges that technology Carmack developed while he was still at Zenimax was the genesis of what would eventually become the Oculus Rift development kit. Zenimax traces this technological relationship back to E3 2012, where Carmack showed a very early "ski goggle" Rift prototype at the Zenimax booth to great acclaim from industry and press.
Zenimax has been seeking compensation for that early contribution to the Oculus tech since August of 2012, according to unnamed "people familiar with the discussions" cited by the Journal. Negotiations reportedly went on for six months and included the possibility of a Zenimax equity stake in Oculus, but they ended without a deal. Carmack later took on a new role as chief technology officer at Oculus and formally departed Id and Zenimax a few months after that. Oculus was acquired by Facebook in a $2 billion deal earlier this year.
"It's unfortunate, but when there's this type of transaction, people come out of the woodwork with ridiculous and absurd claims," an Oculus spokesperson told Ars Technica. "We intend to vigorously defend Oculus and its investors to the fullest extent."
For his part, Yoshida said Sony's engineering team is still going through cycles of experimentation with Project Morpheus in hopes of finalizing the hardware.
"We are still really trying to define or discover what works and what's required for the hardware tech. Our team feels that we're getting closer, but there are certain things that still have to be improved to make a good consumer product," Yoshida said.
Sony's Project Morpheus has a 1080p display and boasts a 90+ degree field of view. It doesn't have a release date or a price yet, but Sony isn't planning to launch it this year or sell the device for $1000 like its other premium head-mounted displays.
When Facebook purchased Oculus VR for $2 billion, both companies stayed fairly tight-lipped about their goals. The money would help Oculus build virtual reality headsets cheaper and better, while Facebook would have a chance to lead the next big computing platform. However, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe just told an audience at TechCrunch Disrupt about one lofty possibility for the pair: building a massively multiplayer experience for one billion simultaneous users. "This is going to be an MMO where we want to put a billion people in VR," he told attendees.
While Iribe admits that a billion-person MMO is "going to take a bigger network than exists in the world today," he says Facebook's network makes a great place to start, and suggested it could be a Metaverse that joins disparate virtual worlds.
Getting to one billion users may also have been the reason Oculus decided to join up with Facebook instead of a traditional gaming company.
Oculus VR filed a response in federal court today to ZeniMax Media's lawsuit regarding the Oculus Rift, alleging that the company, by "deliberately misstating some facts and omitting others," is attempting to cash in on Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of the VR firm.
"ZeniMax's Complaint falsely claims ownership in Oculus VR technology in a transparent attempt to take advantage of the Oculus VR sale to Facebook," reads today's filing, which was provided to Polygon by an Oculus representative. The company also reaffirmed the holding of John Carmack, its chief technology officer who was formerly employed by ZeniMax at id Software, that "there is not a line of ZeniMax code or any of its technology in any Oculus VR product." Oculus, like ZeniMax, is requesting a jury trial to settle the matter.
