Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

variety.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 151 posts

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#61

Post by gshulegaard »

aresant wrote: post #44

If the original complaint is to be believed(1) - which Juror's found credible -the course of events, tldr was something like this: - Zenimax bought ID software for >$100m(1) on June 24, 2009. - Carmack signed up with Zenimax for an earn-out / golden-handcuffs agreement that ended in June of 2013. - Carmack was enthralled with VR. - Carmack found Palmer via an internet forum, reached out to get a rift to try. - Carmac…

I feel like this timeline is missing somethings...like where does Palmer working as a contractor at Zenimax fit into here?

Also what about all the flippant allegations Zenimax was making about Luckey's technical expertise?

What about the allegations that the IP was from Zenimax proper?

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#62

Post by rounce »

> ZeniMax isn’t a household name with most consumers, but the company’s subsidiaries have produced video games like “Quake,” “Fallout,” and “Wolfenstein.

So read the complaint in full, and it's a fair bit different to how it's reported in the OP. Article frames the situation in a pretty odd manner, almost implying ZeniMax by association had a hand in those titles. Also completely misses out the depth of prior association between Carmack and ZeniMax.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#63

Post by dkonofalski »

pipio21 wrote: post #57
dkonofalski wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was the prototype itself that was barely functioning, it was the software side that wasn't great. I remember when Palmer first showed off the device, it seemed to track just fine. When they introduced actual content, though, it became disorienting really quickly. I backed them on Kickstarter so I got to see the DevKit1, DK2, and the CV1. The difference between the early versions and the end versions…

"That being said, it makes me laugh a little to see that Valve and the HTC Vive managed to outpace Oculus." It was the other way around. Valve had been working in VR for years before the first oculus prototype. Oculus contacted Steam and copied the tech they had. The Steam guys actually helped Luckey because it was the small guy doing the open source thing. They did not take into account the selloff to facebook of al…

I don't know how much stock I put into this. If you're going based off of what Yates said in that Reddit interview, I'd take that with a grain of salt. Palmer was working on a 3D head mounted display back in 2010/2011 and Valve has only admitted to VR research since 2012/2013. That's not to say that they couldn't have worked on it before then, but Palmer wasn't involved at that point. He also was only working on a 3D headset and wasn't initially planning on a VR headset from what I understand.

On top of that, Oculus definitely had more marketing/media buzz so they were ahead of Valve in the consumer mind. The end product might be closer to Valve's than to his original prototype, but he definitely had a small head start on them for the prototype and a huge head start from a marketing perspective. Valve all but shattered that.

Here's Palmer's first announcement in like 2012: http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=14777

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#64

Post by gshulegaard »

cpncrunch wrote: post #48
elastic_church wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sued in 2014 so the clock stops there.

It looks like they sued in May 2014, and the acquisition closed in July 2014, so it looks like facebook just didn't do adequate due diligence.

Having filed suit before the FB acquisition, I am a lot less perturbed.

But a lot of the negative posturing from ZeniMax during the case still rubs me the wrong way.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#65

Post by JohnDotAwesome »

daenz wrote: post #55
aresant wrote: post #44

If the original complaint is to be believed(1) - which Juror's found credible -the course of events, tldr was something like this: - Zenimax bought ID software for >$100m(1) on June 24, 2009. - Carmack signed up with Zenimax for an earn-out / golden-handcuffs agreement that ended in June of 2013. - Carmack was enthralled with VR. - Carmack found Palmer via an internet forum, reached out to get a rift to try. - Carmac…

What in the world was Carmack doing, working on another company's project, using your current company's time and resources? Don't get me wrong, the guy is a genius, and I love nearly everything he has a hand in, but you would think that with his level of seniority, some alarm bells would have gone off in his head.

There's a story in Masters of Doom where Carmack and Romero do just that. If I recall correctly, they would take company (Softdisk I believe) computers at night because they were more powerful than their home computers, and use them to develop their own games. I think they even worked on their own games on company time. I might be getting the details wrong on that one, but sounds like Carmack dgaf (or just doesn't think about how these things could potentially be wrong/misaligned).

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#66

Post by jMyles »

leggomylibro wrote: post #59
daenz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in the world was Carmack doing, working on another company's project, using your current company's time and resources? Don't get me wrong, the guy is a genius, and I love nearly everything he has a hand in, but you would think that with his level of seniority, some alarm bells would have gone off in his head.

Some alarm bells probably did go off, but they were probably silenced fairly quickly with something along the lines of, "but this is really cool and I want to work on it. Plus, it's not like my employer is actively working on a VR that I'd be competing with." And at the end of the day, Carmack isn't the one who is out $500M, is he?

In retrospect, he came out smelling like roses.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#67

Post by bishnu »

legodt wrote: post #58
daenz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in the world was Carmack doing, working on another company's project, using your current company's time and resources? Don't get me wrong, the guy is a genius, and I love nearly everything he has a hand in, but you would think that with his level of seniority, some alarm bells would have gone off in his head.

I don't think Carmack works that way. All he really cares about professionally (I'm not talking about his personal life or rocketry) is doing good work and pushing his code to the limits of the field. Oculus hardware was a big coding challenge without much marked territory or set rules for Carmack, so that's probably the only thing he was thinking about while working.

If he does, he's come a long way from the John Carmack that consistently open-sourced his 3D engines and followed up with developers who failed to abide by the GPL [0].

(I don't think he works the way you describe at all).

[0] https://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/finger.pl?id=1&time=200002...

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#68

Post by spatulon »

leggomylibro wrote: post #59
daenz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in the world was Carmack doing, working on another company's project, using your current company's time and resources? Don't get me wrong, the guy is a genius, and I love nearly everything he has a hand in, but you would think that with his level of seniority, some alarm bells would have gone off in his head.

Some alarm bells probably did go off, but they were probably silenced fairly quickly with something along the lines of, "but this is really cool and I want to work on it. Plus, it's not like my employer is actively working on a VR that I'd be competing with." And at the end of the day, Carmack isn't the one who is out $500M, is he?

He is personally out $150m, according to the article.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#69

Post by jfolkins »

JohnDotAwesome wrote: post #65
daenz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in the world was Carmack doing, working on another company's project, using your current company's time and resources? Don't get me wrong, the guy is a genius, and I love nearly everything he has a hand in, but you would think that with his level of seniority, some alarm bells would have gone off in his head.

There's a story in Masters of Doom where Carmack and Romero do just that. If I recall correctly, they would take company (Softdisk I believe) computers at night because they were more powerful than their home computers, and use them to develop their own games. I think they even worked on their own games on company time. I might be getting the details wrong on that one, but sounds like Carmack dgaf (or just doesn't th…

LOVE THIS BOOK! And you are correct, they indeed "borrowed" the machines.
Post reply on HN