A company called ZeniMax Media Inc. has accused John Carmack of stealing some of its intellectual property and giving it to Oculus Rift. In case you didn’t catch that Oculus Rift got picked up by Facebook for two billion dollars and apparently now ZeniMedia, the owner of ID Software and former employee of John Carmack thinks that they got some of its IPs without paying for it.
The news is coming from sources close to the company that talked to the Wall Street Journal, claiming that some key technologies used by Oculus to develop Rift were in fact ‘borrowed’. This is quite a nasty accusation and we are sure that this is all about the money.
Carmack reacted to this very serious accusation on Twitter.
“Oculus uses zero lines of code that I wrote while under contract to Zenimax,“ he tweeted.
Oculus Rift probably makes a bit more sense than Google Glass, but just like the Google technology it is still years from serious application and real world use. We tried both prototypes and we can tell you that despite being nice, they are not something that will change the face of the communication or gaming anytime soon.
Just remember what happed with 3D gaming and 3D TV, despite billions in investments on the part of content providers, TV makers and the rest of the industry, 3D simply did not materialise. Mind you, 3D fimls and TV were aimed at a much wider audience than Occulus Rift of Google Glass. In other words, it is probably still too early for something like Occulus Rift or Google Glass, although many geeks love both concepts.
Oculus Rift is heading in the right direction, but just like photo realistic games didn’t happen in 2014 despite many people expecting that some 10 years ago, we don’t think Oculus Rift will become a serious gaming device overnight.
With $2 billion at stake, this might escalate to become one of the biggest legal battles in gaming, but again we are quite sure that Facebook double checked intellectual property and patent claims before if cashed out $2 billion dollar. No public company makes such a deal without due diligence.
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