Zenimax accuses Carmack of theft, updates Oculus lawsuit

It looks like things are getting uglier in Zenimax's lawsuit filing against Oculus. The complaint was first filed back in 2014 and this week, things seemed to escalate, with Zenimax claiming that John Carmack stole documents and custom  dev tools when he left id Software to join Oculus, the update has also dragged in Oculus CEO, Brendan Irbe by name for the first time, while further clarifying claims against Palmer Luckey.

Zenimax has amended its complaint against Oculus, claiming that in his last days at the company, John Carmack spent his time copying thousands of documents from a company computer. After his official termination date, Carmack is also accused of returning to the Zenimax office to grab one of the company's VR development tools.

As GameInformer points out, the suit also increases its focus on Palmer Luckey, with further allegations that he took ideas and technology directly from Zenimax: “Luckey increasingly held himself out to the media and the public as the visionary developer of the Rift’s VR Technology, which had actually been developed by ZeniMax without Luckey’s involvement.”

According to the suit, it was Oculus CEO, Brendan Irbe who helped spread a tale about Palmer Luckey inventing VR in his parents' garage in the early days of the company. Zenimax is claiming that this is simply not true and that Luckey relied on Zenimax's code and games to demo the Rift:

“Oculus, at Iribe’s direction, disseminated to the press the false and fanciful story that Luckey was the brilliant inventor of VR technology who had developed that technology in his parents’ garage. In fact, that story was utterly and completely false: Luckey lacked the training, expertise, resources, or know-how to create commercially viable VR technology, his computer programming skills were rudimentary, and he relied on ZeniMax's computer program code and games to demonstrate the prototype Rift. Luckey increasingly and falsely held himself out to the media and the public as the visionary developer of the Rift’s VR Technology, which had actually been developed by ZeniMax without any substantial contribution from Luckey.”

If you want to take a look at the full complaint made against Oculus, you can find it, HERE.

Update: An Oculus spokesperson has been in touch with me via email with a statement from the company: “This complaint filed by ZeniMax is one-sided and conveys only ZeniMax's interpretation of the story. We continue to believe this case has no merit, and we will address all of ZeniMax's allegations in court.”

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE. 

KitGuru Says: All of these accusations are pretty major and paint quite the picture of Oculus and Luckey's early days starting out. However, these are still just allegations, we haven't heard the other side of the story just yet. What do you guys think of these fresh allegations? 

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