Over the last few years there has been a major confrontation within the industry where ZeniMax claimed that individuals such as Palmer Luckey and John Carmack had stolen company research to help with the development of the Oculus Rift headset. Today a jury ruled that the individuals hadn’t stolen any trade secrets, but did find that Palmer Luckey and Oculus did not comply with a non disclosure agreement.
This breach of contract has led to ZeniMax being awarded $500 million. The court case has seen the individuals mentioned above as well as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg all give testimony. It’s too early to see what the fallout of the decision will be but it is very unlikely we’d see the Oculus Rift removed from sale, since there was no proof provided for the allegations of research theft.
Still $500 million is a huge chunk of change though Facebook shouldn’t have too much trouble covering it, considering it spent $2 billion purchasing Oculus. Still I doubt the investors will be happy with losing that much money.
In other news Zenimax today announced it had acquired Escalation Studios, a studio which recently contributed to the recent Doom game, as well as creating the VR title Please Don’t Touch Anything. Interestingly that game is only available on Oculus branded headsets.
UPDATE: Zenimax have threatened to stop Oculus from using certain code, which would effectively halt the sale of Oculus Rift.
“We will consider what further steps we need to take to ensure there will be no ongoing use of our misappropriated technology, including by seeking an injunction to restrain Oculus and Facebook from their ongoing use of computer code that the jury found infringed ZeniMax’s copyrights,” said CEO Robert Altman.
Tuffcub
Cripes
TSBonyman
At least it doesn’t seem to infringe on any patents Oculus may have so they can continue business as usual. But 500 million… that’s going to sting.
TSBonyman
Update: Oh sh** ..
MrYd
Only 200 of that $500m is for the NDA thing. The rest is for copyright infringement and “false designation”. Which I’m guessing is something along the lines of copyright infringement with the added bonus of claiming it was theirs to copy in the first place.
Which sounds worse to me.
Of course, by the time Oculus/Facebook appeal and it gets dragged out through the courts for even longer, the whole VR fad will be over anyway. So if Zenimax get some sort of injunction now, Oculus is screwed. Or if gets dragged out for years, Zenimax can probably claim the profits from all 3 Oculuses that get sold by then.
Severn2j
lol, you’re not a VR fan are you? ;)
MrYd
I had a go on the Oculus one the other day. It was a bit disappointing. The resolution obviously needs to be a lot higher to stop it being distracting when you can see pixels, strapping a massive thing to your head needs to be more comfortable, and when the young man warns you beforehand that he may touch you…
Well, let’s just say I came away disappointed and untouched.
Severn2j
Yeah resolution is a weak point, along with the price of course.. I expect the next generation will have 4k displays instead of the 1440p (1080p on PSVR) we have now.
I find I stop noticing the pixels pretty quickly though and supersampling goes a fair way to fixing it (although that requires a meaty graphics card.)