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[Rats Off To Ya]

whoever wins: VR loses.

Thanks Zuckerburg & Palmer Luckey for ruining the future of the platform. Dicks.

The platform's fine, IMO. Oculus was already stuck in a weird spot of not matching the Vive for tech and not having the mass market appeal of PSVR. They're not exactly pioneers in the field these days.

 

[Sword Of Doom]

Well doing appropriate due diligence was facebook's responsibility before the purchase.

This is true. A lot of money they were investing

They already admitted in court that FB literally ran through the paper work and legal oversight of buying Oculus for 2B over a single weekend.

there are messages between Zuckerberg and one of his aquisition lawyers, where the lawyer told Zuckeburg that some of the Oculus folks are blatantly lying about some things and all zuckerburg said was to move the paperwork faster to get signed.

So irresponsible

 

[Tagyhag]

Well doing appropriate due diligence was facebook's responsibility before the purchase.

Ha, true. Zuckerberg jumped the gun.

 

[Anticol]

i would love to see nothing more than Facebook and Palmer get fucked hard in court

Same.

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

I'm not worried about VR, there are more open platforms then what FB is trying to push down our throats

i would love to see nothing more than Facebook and Palmer get fucked hard in court

Me too

 

[IrishNinja]

i would love to see nothing more than Facebook and Palmer get fucked hard in court

+1

 

[staticneuron]

Oculus' defense seems stupid. If you stole something, you stole something. Doesn't matter if the other people weren't using it.

That has basically been Carmack's defence - he did a whole bunch of R&D on Zenimax's dime, they weren't interested in bringing it to market, so he thought he could up and leave to another company because it was 'his'.

I think it's highly likely Zenimax will win this.

Did you guys actually click on article to read before commenting

Of the two ZeniMax personnel the plaintiffs called to the stand, neither Altman nor id Software Creative Director Tim Willits were VR experts. Willits, in fact, stated that he didn’t write a single line of code at id Software, and Altman said, “I’m not a technical person.” This led Wilkinson to implore the jury to weigh the credibility of the witnesses, including the often troublesom testimonies offered by Altman and ZeniMax’s computer science experts David Dobkin and Michael Gleicher. She cited the many times District Judge Ed Kinkeade had to step into the defense’s cross examination and force the witnesses to give a direct answer.

The defense closed with a pointed set of responses to the ZeniMax’s allegations. Forensics expert Barbara Frederiksen-Cross found no evidence of copying in Oculus code. Both Carmack and Hollenshead stated that Oculus never got any actual source code for either the Rage VR testbed or Doom 3 BFG Edition. Early Oculus engineers stated they either never saw any Carmack source code or confirmed their code was developed independently. And every trade secret component (such as chromatic aberration correction, head and neck modeling) was already public, known, and had different solutions within the industry.

Wilkinson returned to her initial comments in closing out her argument to the jury. ZeniMax’s claims are a bunch of “sour grapes,” she said.

That sounds pretty direct and straight foward to me.

 

[jett]

After Carmack admitting he took data when he left id, I can't see how Bethesda doesn't win. They'll reach an agreement probably.

Still not sure why Facebook paid two billion for Oculus.

 

[Tagyhag]

Did you guys actually click on article to read before commenting

That sounds pretty direct and straight foward to me.

Admittedly I only read the OP, but considering what Carmack has said, things aren't looking that great for Oculus.

 

[SeanTSC]

i would love to see nothing more than Facebook and Palmer get fucked hard in court

Yep, fuck all those guys. I hope that the jury awards Zenimax as much as possible.

And I think VR will be plenty fine between the Vive and PSVR.

 

[Vyse The Legend]

whoever wins: VR loses.

Thanks Zuckerburg & Palmer Luckey for ruining the future of the platform. Dicks.

The Rift is likely not even the best selling hardware at this point. If it is, it's not by much. Regardless, Vive will live on, as will Valve and SteamVR.

Also, I'm really not a fan of Zenimax, but they certainly have a strong, possibly ironclad, case here. The Giant Bomb guys mentioned on their podcast that they met with Carmack at the iD offices for a demo of the early Rift prototypes using software running off PC's there. That's a huge corporate no-no.

 

[Bizzquik]

I mean, if they win, can they finally just fund Fallout: Obsidian 2 already...?

 

[Zaph]

Did you guys actually click on article to read before commenting



That sounds pretty direct and straight foward to me.

Err, the first part of your bold has no relevance on anything, and the second part is a snippet from the defence closing statement? That's obviously going to favour the...defence.

And even if no direct source code copying was found, that doesn't mean solutions or concepts that were first developed on Zenimax time, and then later materialised at Oculus, won't go in favour of Zenimax.You can't re-write or re-create something and call it new (which is one of the main reasons tech firms try to make employees sign non-competes).

 

[dEvAnGeL]

man, everything is going Sony's way this generation when it comes to gaming related hardware lol

 

[Tigress]

I mean, if they win, can they finally just fund Fallout: Obsidian 2 already...?

Hey, win win for us!

 

[Wolfgang Jr]

Oculus are FUCKED. You get caught lying about evidence, the judge is going to go in RAW.

 

[Iva Demilcol]

Take my energy, Zenimax! つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

+1

 

[Voras]

I mean, if they win, can they finally just fund Fallout: Obsidian 2 already...?

Why would Obsidian want to work with them again after what happened last time?

 

[AuthenticM]

I cannot fucking believe I am rooting for Zenimax, but I am.

 

[AmyS]

Oculus Rekt ?

 

[Nairume]

Why would Obsidian want to work with them again after what happened last time?

Obsidian is probably not in a position to turn down work like that.

 

[Speely]

This might be the only situation I can think of where I hope Zenimax wins.

Never thought I would say that.

 

[Gnub]

“If they could make it, why’d they take it?” - Anthony Sammi’s, ZeniMax attorney





full story here

Oh damn. They got a rhyme? ZeniMax invoked the spirit of Johnny Cochran to win this. It's over FB.

 

[plagiarize]

My gut says that Zenimax is going to win, but I don't know if they'll get $4b.

They are notoriously litigious, and a lot of the legal action they've taken or threatened has been unfounded, but I think they have a strong case here.

Pretty much this.

 

[Compsiox]

I just hope VR doesn't suffer as a whole.

Also, I hope Zenimax actually does something with the tech once they win.

 

[cleveridea]

Facebook is likely making around $1 billion in profit per month by now if they continue to grow at the same rate as Q3 (they made more than $1 billion per month in Q3 before taxes, that's profit not revenue)

They could pay $4 billion in cash, and make it back in profit in 4 months, so its not like any harm comes to facebook if they get the worse case scenario.

 

[LOLCats]

I am excited to see the outcome.

 

[Speely]

I just hope VR doesn't suffer as a whole.

Also, I hope Zenimax actually does something with the tech once they win.

VR will prolly be as fine as it can be. They have two main competitors invested in innovating on this front.

I doubt Zeni would do anything with the tech, though.

 

[Elandyll]

Did you guys actually click on article to read before commenting



That sounds pretty direct and straight foward to me.

I don't think you understand.
It's all about Carmack.

Under his contract with Zenimax, Everything he was developping during his employment time was theirs.

People in that kind of position don't stop being employees when they're not on site, or outside of the 9-5 hours.

And then, "They were not gonna use it anyway" is a terrible defense...

 

[Zubz]

I hope Zenimax wins. I'm not a fan of either side, but I have contempt toward Luckey/Oculus, & I definitely want all the smudges on Zuckerberg possible if he's going into politics.

 

[Aztechnology]

whoever wins: VR loses.

Thanks Zuckerburg & Palmer Luckey for ruining the future of the platform. Dicks.

Vive still exists. I'd argue its way better anyway.

 

[RS4-]

Waiting for the 4b to turn into 400m (or 40) instead because someone will cry about those poor poor Facebook/oculus accounts.

It's like fining the banks.

 

[GlassAwful]

Oh damn. They got a rhyme? ZeniMax invoked the spirit of Johnny Cochran to win this. It's over FB.

If the code don't compile, you must mistrial.

 

[AAK]

What are the chances all the hardware/software engineers, designers, programmers, leadership and other game developers retain their jobs at Oculus after this?

 

[chromatic9]

Amazing how the good guys become the bad guys.

From day 1 I said Zenimax have a case. This was dismissed out of hand. People went to Andromeda and back to defend Oculus and Luckey.

 

[BlastProcessing]

Take my energy, Zenimax! つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Bob Loblaw lobs Spirit Bomb.

 

[Gator86]

i would love to see nothing more than Facebook and Palmer get fucked hard in court

This. Fuck that dirtbag.

 

[hanspampel]

whoever loses, we win.

How so?

Put a few zeros after 4 and Facebook do

Lol nah. Not even 1 zero after 4bn.

You know the money Facebook spent on WhatsApp? Nearly just investor money and no Facebook money

 

[OverBlood 3]

Don't you just love excessive wealth.

 

[pkScary]

No idea who'll actually win this, but I hope it's Oculus, because I don't want them having to pay an exorbitant amount of money to Zenimax. Let's keep the money in Oculus and invested in pushing VR forward.

 

[Memorabilia]

Trump's little brother needs to be paid!

Remember when Zenimax's CEO accepted a plea deal when settling a civil suit with the federal reserve which banned him from practising banking for life? Great folks on both sides!

I don't share the hate towards Oculus and I hope the company doesn't get screwed because of this. We need a lot of big companies in the game if we want VR to be popular.

That Luckey though...

I haven't been following this case closely, but it seems to me this would hinge on Carmack's contract when he was still employed by Zenimax. Specifically, did the wording indicate that anything he developed at any time, day or night, "belong" to Zenimax? Or was there a loophole clause in which he was able to develop 'personal projects' outside normal '9-5' hours that would arguably belong to him and not Zenimax?

On a personal note, yeah Palmer Luckey is a dirt-bag. Even Zuckerberg has become increasingly distasteful (and his apparent political ambitions are laughable...as brilliant as he may be, the guy seems to have mild Asberger's...not exactly public facing personality kinda stuff...so the ego must be out of control). His apparent rush job on the legalese side of the Oculus acquisition looks to be biting him in the ass. On the other hand, I find many of the top people at Zenimax to be even more reprehensible and their overall corporate culture as well as their overly litigious nature to be gag inducing. There are very few if any "good guys" in this situation. And chances are if Zenimax "wins" they will just sit on the VR tech and do nothing productive with it.

I do hope Carmack lands on his feet. He may have played fast and loose with "company time" here, but he's always been all about pushing the tech and its hard not to see him as the only (sorta) protagonist worth rooting for, despite his naivety about taking stuff with him when he left. It does look like it'll come down to how his contract was worded. I wonder if a small part of him ever regrets selling iD in the first place (especially to a company like Zenimax)?

 

[demigod]

So if i see someone hooking up a 60 inch tv with a/v cables I can take it because they were not valuing it?

According to the lawyer, yes.

 

[staticneuron]

Admittedly I only read the OP, but considering what Carmack has said, things aren't looking that great for Oculus.

Err, the first part of your bold has no relevance on anything, and the second part is a snippet from the defence closing statement? That's obviously going to favour the...defence.

And even if no direct source code copying was found, that doesn't mean solutions or concepts that were first developed on Zenimax time, and then later materialised at Oculus, won't go in favour of Zenimax.You can't re-write or re-create something and call it new (which is one of the main reasons tech firms try to make employees sign non-competes).

I don't thnk you understand.
It's all about Carmack.

Under his contract with Zenimax, Everything he was developping during his employment time was theirs.

People in that kind of position don't stop being employees when they're not on site, or outside of the 9-5 hours.

And then, "They were not gonna use it anyway" is a terrible defense...

Don't get me wrong, Carmack said some crazy stuff but where is the evidence. I think that is going to be the issue because after being on multiple juries they really ask you to make a decision based on the facts at hand. So if it is true that no code was found and unique techniques were proven to be publicly available then on what ground exactly would zenimax win? And apparently this is not an issue with non compete is it? It doesn't seem like that was mentioned at all.

 

[Chobel]

How so?

Oculus and Zenimax are hated by GAF and most of the internet.

 

[Pacotez]

Even tho I kinda like Mark I'd like to see some of is friends getting fucked.
But I don't want to be because of Zenimax and Carmack. I'm actually rooting for Facebook on this one but mostly because of Carmack

 

[vio]

Zenimax owns Bethesda right? This means more funds for Elder Scrolls VI!

The engine will still suck ass though.

 

[Speely]

The engine will still suck ass though.

It is known.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

man, everything is going Sony's way this generation when it comes to gaming related hardware lol

How does this benefit Sony?

 

[Triggerhappytel]

How much did Zuckerberg pay for Oculus - was it a couple of billion? Got to be regretting that decision if they end up with another bill of $4 billion (ish), and on top of that the Rift headsets don't seem to be the big success many had excepted.

How does this benefit Sony?

Probably thinking damage to Oculus = benefit to PSVR.

 

[Rymuth]

Oculus was a flubbed company all the way along.

- Not thinking through the legal ramifications of hiring Carmack and using his Zenimax work.
- Sitting on Crescent Bay and just letting competitors roll out
- Their several appalling presentations/press conferences.
- Not developing motion controllers early on, shipping with Xbox controller (worst controller for VR of the current gen)
- Sudden walled garden and attempt to lock out PC 'hacks'
- Botched launch, insane price, real shipping problems, disgraceful treatment of markets outside Japan

and thats all before Luckey went cuckoo. I'm glad the future of VR is in Valve and Sony's hands, because Oculus screwed the pooch.

well summarized. It really is/was a comedy of errors.