The story of the legal wrangling between ZeniMax, Oculus (and Facebook) and former Zenimax employee and now CTO of Oculus VR John Carmack is quite extensive, with a number of different twists and turns. The saga is still not yet over entirely, but for John Carmack at least, there is some good news, as legal dispute between Zenimax and Carmack is at an end.
The legal dispute first began way back in 2014, when ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda, filed a lawsuit against Oculus VR and its founder, Palmer Luckey, claiming that Oculus had used code developed at ZeniMax in the Oculus SDK.
Subsequently, in 2017, John Carmack posted a statement on his personal Facebook page, where he was highly critical of the experts that ZeniMax used during the trial for the lawsuit, and then filed suit against ZeniMax Media for unpaid fees.
The fees were said to be the second half of a payment due to Carmack from the initial sale of his videogame studio id Software. ZeniMax were said to be refusing to either pay Carmack or convert the due payment into ZeniMax stock. The fees were reported to be worth over $22.5 million (USD).
Carmack announced on Twitter that the dispute was now concluded. His twitter post said: “My personal legal disputes are over – ZeniMax has fully satisfied their obligations to me from the purchase of id Software, and we have released all claims against each other.”
The Twitter post did have an addendum that the appeal for Oculus is still going forward. Oculus are currently appealing the $200 million that was ordered against Oculus for breach of contract and an additional $50 million for copyright infringement.
A previous order for $250 million which was ordered against Oculus and its co-founders Palmer Luckey and Brenden Iribe for false designation was dismissed by the court as it was judged to lack sufficient evidence for damages.
For future coverage on the ongoing Oculus and ZeniMax, keep checking back with VRFocus.