Oculus’ Response to False Claims by Zenimax

The ‘Interwebz’ was buzzing last week when Zenimax claimed that Oculus Rift and John Carmack were using tech that was developed when Carmack was working with id Software, which is owned by Zenimax.  They claimed that the tech is now in the Oculus Rift Headset and that they own the right.  Well seems that Oculus is not of the same opinion.

They have offered up an official response in such that it is broken down for all to see.  We were told that this will be the only response Oculus will be providing at this time. Here is what they have to say.

We are disappointed but not surprised by Zenimax’s actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false. In the meantime, we would like to clarify a few key points:

• There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products. 

• John Carmack did not take any intellectual property from Zenimax.

• Zenimax has misstated the purposes and language of the Zenimax non-disclosure agreement that Palmer Luckey signed. 

• A key reason that John permanently left Zenimax in August of 2013 was that Zenimax prevented John from working on VR, and stopped investing in VR games across the company. 

• Zenimax canceled VR support for Doom 3 BFG when Oculus refused Zenimax’s demands for a non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus.  

• Zenimax did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, Zenimax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has Zenimax now made these claims through its lawyers.

• Despite the fact that the full source code for the Oculus SDK is available online (developer.oculusvr.com), Zenimax has never identified any ‘stolen’ code or technology.

So there you have it.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months.