ZeniMax Files Lawsuit Against Oculus

^^^^ It doesn't matter how they look, it matters if they have a case. I have no idea one way or the other, but if even some of this is true, they do.

Why do I get the feeling this is going to put Oculus way behind on development, allowing Sony to swoop in and eventually get all the VR hype with their thing?

I am a cook I work 2 jobs. On one job I have created a great dinner special. The special becomes a hot trend. A lot of attention is paid. It goes viral. The second jobs business triples. The first job becomes pissed. They want some of that action. Can they sue the second restaurant. My point is zenimax looks bad perusing this. Let it go. Have respect.

+1. This is Zenimax vs. Facebook. I have a hard time caring about the plight of Facebook in court.

Or they could just collaborate and bring Oculus to market with a VR Fallout 4....

This sounds like nonsense, but after that Oculus kickstarter scam I wouldn't be surprised if ZeniMax claims are true. Luckey clearly isn't a good guy.

HA

@mlarrabee: But Oculus never promised a consumer product with the kickstarter and the actual $400mil in actual funds they received are probably the only way a consumer version would get out into the mainstream market. I've never been keen on Facebook, but if they handle it the way Disney has with Marvel, just basically providing muscle, then I see no problem with it. If Facebook eventually fucks it up, then I'll have something to complain about, but until then I'll remain hopefully optimistic about the Oculus Rift coming to retail.

I agree so much. This is one of very few instances where I want Facebook to fight back and win.

What Zenimax is probably going to do is drag their feet with this lawsuit now. The longer Oculus has pending litigation against it, it becomes difficult to secure necessary investments from other companies in terms of capital and games. They are hoping Oculus blinks first to get this behind them.

I love the BS tactics that these large corporate companies pull when they see a potential money maker that they can manipulate to their advantage. Did Zenimax have to file against Oculus/Facebook, nooo, but their sleazy lawyers thought they should...those greedy bastards.

@spraynardtatum: There was no declaration that Oculus would remain independent, but Luckey selling to Facebook after taking people's money for a gaming VR headset but before ever delivering a gaming VR headset soured me in much the same way.

"no merit whatsoever" is strong. they definitely have a case.

Like when Palmer Luckey took two billion dollars and sold his vision to facebook?

Man, can we please just drop this? We meaning Zenimax. It's not endearing, it won't work, and it's a waste of both companies time.

Given how quickly they're moving forward, ZeniMax may have a some substantial evidence to support this claim. I would not be surprised to see this thing get settled out of court.

I know the people who instigated this legal action have never even met the developers of Fallout 3 and 4, but it still sours me a bit.

The love of money is the root of all evil, and it often wastes a good deal of time and that precious money.

So Jon Carmack was working at a big, cumbersome, aging company that restricted his exploration of technology, so he and some other employees worked off and possibly on company time to explore a new and exciting tech project? I feel like they should have known this was going to happen.

I hope he wasn't 'borrowing' Zenimax's computers on the weekend, and I hope John Romero wasn't involved this time.

Seconded.

Yo Scoops, I love you, but please no .gifs at the end of articles.

What's up with Zenimax and lawsuits. Zenimax settled with Mojang over the "Scrolls" name.

Seems shitty of Zenimax but I wouldn't be surprised if they have a case.

I wonder if they do have a case.

This smells to much like a settlement being sought after by a disgruntled ZeniMax.

Well, kinda conflicted with the fact that I like to check out the new Wolfenstein game since its pretty good BUT their parent company are being very petulant. Hmmm....

zenimax buying up a lottery ticket I see. well, that's our civil justice system for you.

I second this notion.

Its not the fact that they are filing a law suit which annoys me. For all I know they could be right. But what does annoy me is that the law suit conveniently came after there was money to be made.

Who actually did this? I don't even use Facebook or ever had an account.

I don't know how far this will get without Zenimax being able to point to certain lines of code. There's a lot of ambiguous, circumstantial stuff in the claim, but nothing specific.

@ohdearaudrey: Why when it's easier for people to just make the plaintiff the bad guy without doing any research on what's actually going on?

I don't think people know what exactly they are up in ire about from one second to the next on the internet.

PATRICK

Please don't start talking in animated macros like the rest of the world :(

End it with a game of Nidhogg. Have Zenimax best player play against Occulus / Facebook best player and end it with a one on one scrub league. Only way.

Silly Patrick, this isn't Tumblr.

Not everybody at Zenimax is a lawyer. I think there's a janitor too.

Oh man, I've never had the opportunity to watch armies of lawyers stamping down a hallway in unison. Now's my chance...

Booo, I don't know how embed.ly works. D:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl3e-OUnavQ

Two media giants... pissing in the wind... in front of the media? No.

No. No. No.

No.

If zenimax is fighting this hard it seams like they might have something concrete to get them what they are asking for. Or they're just really desperate for some of that face book kizash. Whichever it is I hope this gets bloody at least it will be entertaining. It's wired to me though that Facebook just doesn't buy them out at this point they sure as hell have the money.

Have to give them props though for fighting what they believe in.

If you have a neutral stance on this, just know that the founders of Zenimax are nothing but scummy lawyers. Suing is what they know best.

You have to read the actual court documents to see whats going on here, Zenimax might actually have a case, as they were under an NDA with the creator of rift as they were working on it and devolving it, when the time came after E3 to monetize it Zenimax alleges that they tried to set up meetings with Rift founder to discuss what a fair price to pay for the product they had been developing together, instead the rift creator formed his own company, stopped answering zenimaxes calls and started doing his own thing.

Zenimax did the right thing here and just waited, instead of paying the rift creator money for his product that they helped develop, they just let him do it out of pocket and seeing the potential in it waited for someone else to buy it so they could step in and get a cut, so it went from paying someone else, who ignored their calls and blew them off, to getting paid.

That's how you do business folks.

Can't we all just get along?

@alyssia: I thought people were over this whole "view Facebook in VR" thing. How does that even make sense?

Any flashbacks to what happened when Silicon Knights tried to sue Epic?

As awesome as I'm sure the Oculus Rift is in person, I still can't help but feel they're fighting tooth and nail over something that will completely fall flat in mass market sales. There's just no way in hell they're going to sell that thing to Joe Walmart.

This shit was bound to get nasty sooner or later. Oh well.

@alyssia: I find this to be a pretty unlikely outcome. Sure people hate FB, but that doesn't imply any Oculus wrongdoing.