Oculus-ZeniMax Lawsuit: Carmack Steps In

General news News 03/11/2017

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This time, the father of FPS games enters the fray.

John Carmack has filed a lawsuit against his former employer because in 2009 when Bethesda (owned by ZeniMax) purchased id Software for 150 million dollars, he didn’t receive a portion of the money (about 22.5 million dollars). Remember, he was one of the founders of the developer team in 1991, which became known for its Wolfenstein, Doom or Quake series.

UploadVR got a copy of the court documents. Carmack’s suit says ZeniMax has been refusing to pay due to the „claimed violations of Mr. Carmack’s Employment Agreement and ZeniMax’s alleged intellectual property rights.” This sentence is referring to the previous lawsuit between Oculus and ZeniMax: ZeniMax sued Oculus for 4 billion (!) dollars, accusing Carmack of stealing id Software’s technology to help create the Oculus Rift VR-headset. However, ZeniMax won the case and 500 million dollars along with it, with the possibility of making the Rift temporarily unavailable as well.

ZeniMax has responded to Carmack. The statement submitted to UploadVR says the following: „[…]John Carmack‘s latest legal complaint which is completely without merit. […] Mr. Carmack was personally found guilty by the jury of the theft of ZeniMax’s property, including thousands of confidential ZeniMax documents he secretly took when he quit his employment, and his theft of the entire source code to id’s latest game, RAGE, including the id tech 5 engine. In addition to those crimes, it was revealed by an independent court-appointed computer forensics expert, that upon receiving notice of the Oculus lawsuit, the files on Mr. Carmack’s Oculus computer were intentionally wiped–destroying the evidence, and that a sworn affidavit Carmack filed with the Court denying the wiping was false. The wiping occurred right after Mr. Carmack researched on Google how to wipe a hard drive. And there was much more. Apparently lacking in remorse, and disregarding the evidence of his many faithless acts and violations of law, Mr. Carmack has decided to try again. We look forward to presenting our response to Mr. Carmack’s latest allegations in Court.”

ZeniMax will likely go to court again, and Carmack might fall on his face for the second time in a row…

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Angyal Anikó

Anikó, our news editor and communication manager, is more interested in the business side of the gaming industry. She worked at banks, and she has a vast knowledge of business life. Still, she likes puzzle and story-oriented games, like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, which is her favourite title. She also played The Sims 3, but after accidentally killing a whole sim family, swore not to play it again. (For our office address, email and phone number check out our IMPRESSUM)