• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Zuck in court: Vetted Oculus over wknd, Actual cost $3b, Investigating Carmack claims

Tovarisc

Member
So basically Valve invented all the lighthouse motion tracking stuff (which is really the magic behind VR imo), and some managers at valve convinced everyone to give the tech to occulus, and then got millions in bribes after Facebook bought them? Holy shit. Valve should join Zenimax in suing these scum.

If nothing else at least FB / Oculus burned some serious bridges with those moves. Collaboration between companies like Oculus and Valve could produce something really good at VR front, but nah... that bridge got burned and as it collapsed also sunk the ship.
 
My only hope is that Carmack, not Luckey, is revealed as the mastermind behind the tech that put Oculus on the map. Fuck Palmer Luckey. Carmack just seemed so single-minded he couldn't care less who got credit as long as the VR tech got made.
 

Zalusithix

Member
So basically Valve invented all the lighthouse motion tracking stuff (which is really the magic behind VR imo), and some managers at valve convinced everyone to give the tech to occulus, and then got millions in bribes after Facebook bought them? Holy shit. Valve should join Zenimax in suing these scum.

Although I do feel bad for Carmack. He is going to take the fall for this. I fucking hate that these contracts exist that force someone to give away all of their ideas to whatever company is paying their healthcare.

Valve created the lighthouse tracking standard, but that came after their split with Oculus. Regardless, they intend for it to be an open standard. There's nothing stopping Oculus from licensing its use in a Rift 2 for free. The real douche move by Oculus in regards to Valve was the poaching of employees.
 
Why? I never played any of the oddworld stuff and don't have a ton of context for him, just that he's been in the industry a long time

It was just after Microsoft made a deal with him to make his next game Xbox exclusive at the time. Pretty much standard practice these days.
 

Zaph

Member
My only hope is that Carmack, not Luckey, is revealed as the mastermind behind the tech that put Oculus on the map. Fuck Palmer Luckey. Carmack just seemed so single-minded he couldn't care less who got credit as long as the VR tech got made.

Even before all the meme stupidity, Luckey never struck me as a wunderkind. I wouldn't be surprised if ZeniMax's claim of him just being a convenient front-man to funnel tech through turns out to be true.
 

Carn82

Member
It was just after Microsoft made a deal with him to make his next game Xbox exclusive at the time. Pretty much standard practice these days.

Weird. Sign of the times I guess. Fast forward however many years and you have a similar situation with Bloodborne, which is of course a GAF darling. Maybe it's just because there isn't a more public personality behind the franchise (Miyazaki vs Lanning)
 

Nzyme32

Member
Yeah, interesting stuff. Funny that Steam actually sort of slows down innovation and other new/internal IPs. Also, couldnt help but giggle a bit at "A lot of folks at Valve had very bad experiences with unfit managers (mostly at Microsoft)".

Not really for software IP, but for the hardware efforts that seemed to be the case at the time, which is around 2013 / 2014. Valve have shaken up how they do a lot of that now, actually properly looking at their licencing etc.
 
Definitely some big oversights here from Facebook. It really does seem like Zuckerberg walked in one day, tried the Rift and was like "buy, buy, buy!"

With that said, I feel like Oculus and Facebook will somehow manage to come out of this unscathed in the long run.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Guess what buddy, that's how it works in the IT industry. Code written on company assets on company dime on company time belongs to the company.

Anyone who doesn't think it works that way is too dreamy for their own good.

I don't he's talking literally. I seems like he's talking more about the humanity of the process. Like think about it from Carmack's viewpoint. At the end of the day we are talking about who's electricity Carmack was using when he was studying VR.

And everything can go in the gutter due to that small yet important point. As if Zenimax was going to ACTUALLY build a VR headset.

My only hope is that Carmack, not Luckey, is revealed as the mastermind behind the tech that put Oculus on the map. Fuck Palmer Luckey. Carmack just seemed so single-minded he couldn't care less who got credit as long as the VR tech got made.

This is what gets me to upset about this. A smart dude can't even do great research without the stupid business getting in the way. Hate that crap!
 
I don't he's talking literally. I seems like he's talking more about the humanity of the process. Like think about it from Carmack's viewpoint. At the end of the day we are talking about who's electricity Carmack was using when he was studying VR.

And everything can go in the gutter due to that small yet important point. As if Zenimax was going to ACTUALLY build a VR headset.



This is what gets me to upset about this. A smart dude can't even do great research without the stupid business getting in the way. Hate that crap!

Let me be clear, personally I think such contracts are bullshit. I'm just not sure if they're legally bullshit. I know in the Romero days, you agreed to give up ownership of everything id related when you left. I'm sure John knew what was in his contract too... but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of grey area here. I wish Carmack no ill in this.

But I wish Oculus lots of ill.
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
Definitely some big oversights here from Facebook. It really does seem like Zuckerberg walked in one day, tried the Rift and was like "buy, buy, buy!"

With that said, I feel like Oculus and Facebook will somehow manage to come out of this unscathed in the long run.

I could be wrong here, but I was under the impression that Zuckerberg tried the Valve prototype and that led him to wanting to buy Oculus out.
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
Looks like Palmer Luckey testified yesterday. This is his first public appearance since he admitted to funding a white supremacy group.

I found this via Reddit and interestingly enough the top comment was about a quote from Carmack himself from last week:
While he was questioned by ZeniMax's lawyer last week, Carmack admitted to taking thousands of documents and lines of code. ”I copied files that I shouldn't have. I think stealing is an uncharitable way to look at it since I didn't benefit and ZeniMax didn't lose, but I shouldn't have done it, and I did," Carmack said while being questioned by ZeniMax's lawyer. In testimony, Carmack was eager to talk about the documents he took, and explained that ”by the strict intellectual property definition" his copying of documents was considered stealing. Carmack argued that the emails he copied didn't contain source code, rather just snippets of source code, but, Carmack said, there may have been source code included in the attachments of the emails.

I'm no lawyer or juror, but doesn't that alone really cement the case against Oculus/Facebook?
 

~Cross~

Member
Looks like Palmer Luckey testified yesterday. This is his first public appearance since he admitted to funding a white supremacy group.

I found this via Reddit and interestingly enough the top comment was about a quote from Carmack himself from last week:


I'm no lawyer or juror, but doesn't that alone really cement the case against Oculus/Facebook?

Yeah pretty much. He tries to say that "he didn't benefit from it" which might be true but his boss most definitely did when he sold the company to facebook. Also its up to zenimax to decide if they lost money from their intellectual property being used in a way that they didnt want it to be used.
 
I'm no lawyer or juror, but doesn't that alone really cement the case against Oculus/Facebook?

I think this makes Carmack guilty, but it doesn't make Oculus guilty yet. There still needs to be a proof that:

• Oculus knew about Carmack's loot
• Oculus used the code which belonged to Zenimax
• Oculus knew that the code they were using was from Zenimax.
 

Jarmel

Banned

hobozero

Member
From the Gizmodo article:

ZeniMax has tried to prove this by pointing to a video interview where Carmack shows off a functioning virtual reality headset before he had ever met or collaborated with Luckey.

Was this the Brad Shoemaker interview from a few years ago, where Brad tried out the headset covered in dials and duct tape?
 

Parsnip

Member
From the Gizmodo article:



Was this the Brad Shoemaker interview from a few years ago, where Brad tried out the headset covered in dials and duct tape?

Carmack was showing that same thing to a lot of people/outlets, so it's probably one of those from that E3(?).
 
Top Bottom