ZeniMax Challenging Facebook Over Oculus Technology

Headline should read "how do we monetize teens and John Carmack?"

You're confusing them with Apple.

@bbqbram: More than fair.

While I suspect both sides of this battle have valid arguments (ZeniMax in particular must have a pretty good one if they've refused offers and are willing to fight with FaceBook, that or they believe the payoff is worth a big gamble), my main concern is if this move would delay the launch of the Oculus Rift or even potentially result in changes on the hardware/software side of things which could negatively affect consumers.

I've lined out and initialed that exact clause in my paperwork, in front of HR, as I was being hired.

Everything is up for negotiation.

Zenimax haven't an ethical leg to stand on. Fortunately for them, the law has little relation to ethics.

So, you're saying that if I get home from work and make a video game, while occasionally stopping to answer work-related e-mails, that the company potentially owns that game?

Isn't this a crazy, horrible slippery slope that should probably be stopped before it turns into some horrible situation where the only way to own something you create is to either be kickstarted or on welfare?

(Not saying you think this should be the case or anything, I in no way interpreted your post that way, I'm just going all the way down the rabbit hole to see how bad things could be if handling work-related issues in your off-time makes your off-time owned by a company)

OH BOY

Hoo boy! I could very well see the Oculus getting stuck behind legal battle after legal battle and never getting a proper release. Go corporate greed!

Corporate greed is just insane, they see oculus making it big and they want a piece of the pie just because one of their former employees is involved. Corporations want to own everything, even the thoughts in their former employees heads. Here's a thought Zenimax, if you see yourselves as so instrumental in the development of VR, then man up and make your own fucking VR stuff and compete with, or work with, oculus, it should be easy for you if your claims have any basis in reality. Guess it's just easier to just hire some lawyers and try to weasel your way into an easy pay day with fine print, lawyery bullshit, loose interpretations of laws etc huh?

At least Oculus has Facebook lawyers now to fend off the ip/copyright/etc bullshit claims like this that will no doubt keep rolling in as everyone wants a piece of the pie without making a product themselves. Fight douches with more powerful douches.

Whether or not Zenimax is in the wrong. Facebook is still a cancer. Don't know how anyone can justify defending that company.

sounds childish.

Fixed.

I don't think you will ever live that picture down, Will. The only thing that can be done now is to get Norm and Gary to do the same pose and hope their picture catches on instead.

The more PR for Oculus Rift the better!! At least we aren't hearing about Sony's side...

While you're not wrong I think this is one instance where they're not so insane. You'd run into issues like this at most companies.

Most companies aren't usually thrilled when they pay you lots of money for R&D and then you go take it somewhere else, especially when you make a ton of money off your research. The same research that you were really only capable of doing because ZeniMax was paying your salary to basically do said research. Generally when you pay someone for R&D you're expecting a return on that investment of salary and time in the form of pushing that companies work forward and making more money because of it.

It actually sounds like a pretty logical complaint.

This doesn't surprise me at all. ZeniMax are scumbags, and I hope they lose in court, although pulling from what I know about these kind of laws, that actually seems pretty unlikely.

Sure, this whole situation most likely won't phase him even a little bit, but it's better than nothing.

Prior to Facebook going public i couldn't care less about the service or his antics. But since he started throwing around his monopoly money to buy up whatever he figures as the "current hot shit", like WhatsApp or now Oculus Rift, he's become increasingly annoying to me in a nearly personal way.

I mean.. virtual shopping malls, having ads pop up in your face (In 3D!), that's Zuckerbergs future for VR? Can't decide if all this is supposed to be comedic or simply just tragic.

"It was only through the concerted efforts of Mr. Carmack, using technology developed over many years at, and owned by, ZeniMax, that Mr. Luckey was able to transform his garage-based pipe dream into a working reality," reads a legal letter from ZeniMax to Facebook.

But didnt Carmack join well after the initial prototype was launched? The latest prototype is a big step up from what I've read, but that seems like the natural order of things for this device... not something Carmack would necessarily be the brain child of, just a contributor to. Frivolous suit?

If nobody else has, allow me to subpoena one Bradley R. Shoemaker.

12 or so mins in he gets on to the Occulus talk specifically, just good to refresh yourself of where things were at in 2012.

If I ever commission a law far and they use the term, "pipe dream" in a formal communication, I think I'd find another to sue them.

To be fair, VR gaming is almost certainly destined to be niche beyond compare, between the hardware requirements the number of people that will be willing to play it, and the number of people that will be able to play games in VR without the need of Dramamine.

Please, please keep using that picture of Will Smith as long as you possibly can.

I am not going to loose any sleep over one scummy corporation suing another scummy corporation.

This kind of crap seems so petty, makes me sad this is coming from the company that owns Bethesda.

Not really sure that Carmack has done much of anything for Zenimax since they bought ID, unless you think Rage was a really good game. TBH, I don't think ID has been ID for several years now and, other than buying ID Tech, I've wondered if Zenimax has regretted the purchase.

Yeah, if you read over that NDA it seems like Zenimax actually has a case here now that Oculus has been bought. If Oculus is using Zenimax's code, which Carmack says that they own, then sharing it with Facebook (which they are, de facto, just by the nature of being part of Facebook's corporate entity) then Luckey is in breach of the agreement that he signed. I'd love to think that Zenimax's legal team are being a bunch of assholes considering their previous shenanigans regarding Scrolls, but if I were Zenimax I'd probably be doing the exact same thing in this scenario if previous attempts to resolve the issue weren't going anywhere.

Love the backseat lawyers who will rush to judgement without having any idea what role Carmack played, what kind of agreements may have been made between Zenimax and Occulus, and whether that NDA was amended or replaced.

Guess what? None of us know right now! It would be a pretty huge blunder not to resolve a NDA.

It's hard for me to care when two corporations are having legal battles like this.

ZeniMax: The 3rd graders of the games industry.

"I SAW IT FIRST!"

Even at the base level, if you use work resources to work on something that is not for work, your employer has a right to either 1) the work you created, 2) any monetary share or gains from the work, or lastly, 3) to terminate your employment.

This is pretty standard boilerplate for any company you work for. Obviously there are deeper legalities that are involved depending on your job/position, and the creative element of it, but it definitely is standard fare in perpetuity unless you take the care for people to sign off on things as they are created, or unless stated otherwise as per your work contract with your employer (especially so if your job involved creative or proprietary elements).

Exactly this.

Everyone booing Zenimax right now doesn't have a decent grasp on employment contracts and NDAs for intellectual property. If Carmack (or whoever) didn't go through the proper process for clearance, and it's proven that Zenimax substantially invested resources for Carmack to pursue Occulus development (which realistically shouldn't be difficult to prove), then Zenimax deserves every penny they are owed.

If otherwise, then of course not - but until we know the further details of such (which likely will never be disclosed), there's no way of really knowing. This story is about how you manage your employment contract, not corporate greed.

Throwing Zenimax under the bus just because it's generally easy to hate on the greed of corporations is rather unfair, even if in multiple cases elsewhere it is justified. It just might not be the case for this one.

This seems a lot like Zenimax may have let this slide while it was just Oculus as one of the little guys trying to get their footing but now that they have Facebook money, Zenimax is trying to make sure it gets compensated. Which is understandable if there was a "rights to any work" clause in Carmack's contract.

John Carmack looks like my ex-girlfriends father.

@christilton: Pro tip, you don't sign that, you don't get to work there.

Where is resident John Carmack specialist, @brad to weigh in on this story?!

I guess somebody at Zenimax wasn't too thrilled about Facebook buying Oculus either. Given that Carmack's participation has been known for a long time and just now they're suing about it. =p

But this is nothing new. When Wozniack (spelling) made the first Apple computer, he first had to show it to Hewlett-Packard (his employer) and they had to pass on it before he could sell it as his own invention. It's the nature of the business and it's not nearly as nefarious as you guys would like to think in general.

Companies like Zenimax are in the business of creative ideas. They hire people expressly for the purpose of thinking up new ideas and give them resources to create those ideas so that the company can profit off of them. Unlike labor, "think time" is basically unmeasurable or at least unprovable. Without such clauses, employees who think of the best ideas would simply claim it's personal think time and therefore they have all ownership rights and therefore all the profit. It can ruffle some feathers, but it's really just a simple risk-reward proposition. The company is taking the risk of paying you for duds or nothing. Sure, eventually they'll fire you if you give them nothing, but all that time you produce nothing or even things that are non-profitable is risk taken by them. As a result, they get the reward when you think of the next big thing. If, on the other hand, you take the risk, then you get all the reward...assuming you don't starve first.

Now, with all that said, I do think it's crappy when companies don't reward the employee appropriately for that big idea. And I think that in a situation like this, Zenimax is overstepping their bounds. They simply were not going to pursue VR tech on their own, and as long as Mr. Carmack gave them all they asked for, I don't think they have any claim morally to what he did. But since it's facebook, meh, they'll just pay them millions and move along. It's lame, but shouldn't be harmful.