ZeniMax knows that Oculus holds the stronger public opinion, for two reasons: (1) people love Oculus, and (2) Minecraft fans are still stinging from ZeniMax's trademark claims against Mojang re: Scrolls. Very good play on ZeniMax's part, dropping a release and an extremely well-written complaint at once. They want to control the narrative.

But directly using ZeniMax properties to promote the thing while working under a cloud of IP ownership uncertainty was probably not a great move.

Or is it supposed to show how fast-and-loose Oculus was with other people's stuff?

Edit At least reading through the rest, and taking ZeniMax at their word, it looks like ZeniMax has a credible claim that it's their software that got the Rift working. But if true, it feels like there should be some discrete evidence of that by looking at what's running on the Rift.

Naturally a complaint will be written to portray the defendant in as unfavorable a light as possible. As with federal indictments, I wouldn't want to see people form their opinions of a company based on the content of a one-sided complaint against them (not a lawyer, not legal advice).

I was fairly vocally opposed to the Facebook acquisition of Oculus, but still, let's wait for the Oculus response and subsequent settlement or trial.

However, it was not my intention to misconstrue your comment, and if you feel that I have done so, I apologize.

Like so many other (game) programmers, Carmack is a hero of mine, and the bias runs deep. In reading the complaint, though, I was starting to feel for Zenimax, but when the "$500 worth of optics" phrase started appearing, they lost me. The kit, as described in the thread where Carmack and Palmer first interacted in public, was to be a display, display-controller, and some sort of ski-goggle based contraption you could put together. And, iirc, $300 was the price discussed.

But I think the really key point, missing from this complaint, is that, before Carmack (and Abrash at Valve) improved on the Rift, it had stirred up interest because of the concept of using simple, _cheap_, optics, that would allow the display to be closer to the eyes (wide FOV), and pre-correcting for the resulting distortion in software.

Carmack and Abrash provided some secret sauce that I'm sure will be vital to the sense of presence that will drive broad appeal, but the breakthrough was saying "so what if the optics massively distort the image; we'll fix it in software". From what I've read, I'm pretty sure that wasn't Palmer's idea to begin with either, but he was the first one to run with it.

Even though Oculus was not responding (initially) to those requests, Zenimax STILL continued providing code to run on the Rift. It almost looks like Zenimax was trying to get to a point where they could sue Oculus.

The complaint then clearly describes Oculus's proposal (2% equity, subject to dilution, etc) and conveniently glosses over Zenimax's "larger share of equity" counter offer (which Oculus seemingly found far fetched).

And then the turning point; when Zenimax instructed Carmack to stop providing code for the Rift to Oculus, Carmack resigns and joins Oculus (eventually with 5 other "key" VR employees of Zenimax).

I can definitely see how this looks bad for Oculus. They will probably get slapped for the unauthorized IP usage for the DOOM videos, logos per their NDA. But for actual code? Who knows..

The Rift most likely does not run any of Zenimax's code at this point since Carmack must have rewritten it from scratch. But Carmack would obviously remember what and how he wrote the Rift's software; would that count as still infringing upon Zenimax's IP?

So it makes their behaviour look a bit contradictory: one part of Zenimax is asking for (or hinting at) compensation, and another part is setting up FTP sites to transfer code, supplying technical advice and more. And this is happening simultaneously.

But really, that second part is just Carmack being friendly with Luckey, who is at this point some kid in his garage with cool VR tech.

Carmack didn't really resign — his employment contract was up in June 2013. I'm guessing he had a lot of free reign at Zenimax and was likely bored. VR gave him something to be passionate about again, and he just had to wait out his contract before he could go all-in.

Just idly wondering...

If I created a fancy gaming mouse and wrote some software integration with a popular gaming series at the time, could I not offer that as a reward tier for a Kickstarter? I would think as long as I can get resellable boxed copies I could throw it in?

For example, if you create a gaming mouse, buy ten retail copies of the new Doom 7 right off the retail shelves and offer them for promotional purposes at no cost along with your mouse, the publisher (or sometimes game creator) can ask you to cease and desist. The lawsuit, were one to occur, might argue that you're causing misrepresentation (have to be careful not to make it look like your gaming mouse is being endorsed by the game creator or publisher etc), or claim that you're damaging their game's brand through commercial association they didn't approve of, and they could also go the route of claiming you're commercially benefiting from association with their game / brand and seek monetary compensation.

Way back when, circa mid to late 1990's I ran into these types of problems in the gaming industry with a company I operated. The gaming world was a lot more legally benign back then and it was still a serious problem. Back then you could often easily get permission from the company to do a promotion, but you properly would check in with their PR / marketing group and get formal approval. id Software was often decent about these types of things. They did a zillion community promotions of all sorts.

There's nothing illegal about giving out free copies of something that you bought off the shelf, whether or not you have the vendor's authorization to do that. They could claim some type of fraudulent misrepresentation, but I'd think the violations would have to be flagrant and egregious for something like that to fly.

  the key technology Luckey used to establish Oculus was developed by Zenimax

Looks like a negotiating strategy by Zenimax... and since Oculus lacks deep pockets, which pressure could be effective. That is, absent the counter-pressure of public opinion...

[1] http://projects.ict.usc.edu/mxr/diy/fov2go-viewer/ [2] http://blog.kenperlin.com/?p=14708