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Oculus CTO John Carmack Is Suing ZeniMax For $22.5 Million (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The feud between Oculus and ZeniMax Media is opening up once again, this time with the CTO of Oculus, John Carmack, suing his former employer for earnings that he claims are still owed to him. The suit is largely unrelated to the $6 billion trade secrets suit which ended last month with a $500 million judgment against Oculus. Instead, Carmack is suing ZeniMax Media for $22.5 million that he says has not been paid to him for the 2009 sale of his game studio, id Software, known for such pioneering video game classics as Doom and Quake. The lawsuit reveals that ZeniMax Media paid $150 million for the game studio. The document details that Carmack was set to earn $45 million from the id acquisition. In 2011, Carmack converted half of that note into a half-million shares of ZeniMax common stock, but has yet to receive the other half of his earnings in cash or common stock from the company, despite formal requests being made. The lawsuit was reported first by Dallas News.
If I recall correctly, he personally wasn't found guilty of anything. It was other execs and Oculus itself. Even if he was found guilty how would that negate the sale iD to Zenimax? This just seems like Zenimax doing the same thing Activision pulled with ex Infinity Ward execs and employees, using their size/lawyers to avoid paying people money they are owed for as long as they can.
Quoting from Wikipedia (which is well known for never being wrong): "Ultima Underworld has been cited as the first role-playing game to feature first-person action in a 3D environment, and it introduced technological innovations such as allowing the player to look up and down.". I remembering seeing it just before I saw Wolfenstein, and it was much richer. In addition to being able to look up and down, the playing surface wasn't all on the same level, you could step up or down (I don't think that paths could actually cross over each other, although I'm not certain of that), and walls were not always of straight unit lengths, there were curved walls and other refinements that made Wolfenstein look crude. Of course, it was a commercial game and Wolfenstein was shareware (for the first part) so Wolfenstein got lots more play and attention.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Smart people do dumb things, especially when they think they know better than things like the law. I do think that John Carmack has done some really dumb things even though so many people are putting him on a pedestal and calling him a genius. Sure he knows code and he founded a successful business, but that doesn't automatically translate into him being smart at everything.
As I understand, Zenimax were originally going to sue Carmack for breach of his employment contract as part of the Oculus lawsuit, but this was left out. The Oculus lawsuit did establish a few key facts: Carmack did copy information before he left Zenimax, he did deliberately destroy evidence after Zeinmax filed the lawsuit, and he lied on an affidavit denying he wiped evidence.
While Zenimax weren't able to convince the jury of all their claims, it was established that something was taken by Carmack. Ultimately, Carmack wasn't directly on trial there, merely whether Oculus had clear benefit from his actions.
I have no doubt that Zenimax will counter-sue for breach of contract, theft of intellectual property and breach of NDA (among other things). Likely they will argue that Carmack's breach of employment contract is tied to his final contract payment and that damage from his actions equal or exceed the $22.5 million they would have owed him.
Carmack says that Zenimax's refusal to pay is based on 'sour grapes', but I think Carmack's lawsuit is being filed based on 'sour grapes' too. I do recall him making a rant about the independent forensics after Oculus lost the case. Now I believe that this latest lawsuit is another dumb thing being done by a smart person.
He is kicking a legal hornet's nest, especially when Zenimax's lawyers have plenty of information already gained from the Oculus lawsuit. They will know exactly what to go for when they file for discovery in this case.