It’s Official: Zenimax Media Sues Oculus Rift

Zenimax Media, the massive company that owns id Software and Bethesda Softworks, has finally made their dispute against Oculus Rift official.

The company is suing the virtual reality manufacturer for… Well, a lot of things, really. The gist of the situation is that Zenimax claims Oculus stole technology pertaining to virtual reality that make the Oculus Rift headset possible. This was allegedly done with the help of John Carmack, co-creator of id and franchises like Doom and Quake, and a half-dozen other Zenimax employees.

According to Zenimax, Carmack and the other employees developed VR technology under Zenimax contract. After passing off this technology to Oculus they joined the tech start-up (Carmack is Oculus’ Chief Technology Officer) and continued to support the technology they had already developed.

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Zenimax Media, the massive company that owns id Software and Bethesda Softworks, has finally made their dispute against Oculus Rift official.

The company is suing the virtual reality manufacturer for… Well, a lot of things, really. The gist of the situation is that Zenimax claims Oculus stole technology pertaining to virtual reality that make the Oculus Rift headset possible. This was allegedly done with the help of John Carmack, co-creator of id and franchises like Doom and Quake, and a half-dozen other Zenimax employees.

According to Zenimax, Carmack and the other employees developed VR technology under Zenimax contract. After passing off this technology to Oculus they joined the tech start-up (Carmack is Oculus’ Chief Technology Officer) and continued to support the technology they had already developed.

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The lawsuit might be new, but the accusations certainly aren’t. Zenimax publicly posited the situation earlier this month and, apparently, was pursuing compensation for some time before that.

Between then and now, Oculus responded to the pre-lawsuit claim. It stated that there “is not a line of ZeniMax code” inside any of its current Oculus products. Carmack himself backed up that statement on Twitter, saying “Oculus uses zero lines of code that I wrote while under contract to Zenimax.”

According to a statement released to Polygon, it seems the company is sticking to its guns.

“The lawsuit filed by ZeniMax has no merit whatsoever,” an Oculus representative said. “As we have previously said, ZeniMax did not contribute to any Oculus technology. Oculus will defend these claims vigorously.”

Steven "The Future of Games Journalism" Strom plays entirely too much Dota 2. He sometimes plays games when he's not too busy writing about them and their place in our culture, and thinks maybe they're not just a fad after all.