Oculus VR fires back at ZeniMax over latest lawsuit allegations

ZeniMax isn’t backing off the lawsuit it originally filed in 2014 against Oculus VR and Facebook. Instead, the publisher is making some new allegations.

ZeniMax, which owns Fallout publisher Bethesda, names Oculus chief executive Brendan Iribe and chief technology officer John Carmack as defendants in the amended complaint (as first reported by Game Informer). Carmack was previously a chief executive at id Software, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of ZeniMax and the developer of Doom. ZeniMax alleges that Carmack inappropriately copied documents and took them with him after leaving. The company also claims that ZeniMax invented modern virtual reality with almost no input from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who is widely credited with many of the early breakthroughs that power the Rift and Vive headsets.

“Oculus used ZeniMax’s hardware and software technology to create a software development kit for the Rift and to develop, modify, and tune the Rift hardware,” reads the complaint. “Luckey did not have the expertise or knowledge to create a viable SDK for the Rift.”

We reached out to Oculus for its take on this amended complaint, and it provided the following statement from a company spokesperson:

“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.”

ZeniMax wants Oculus and Facebook to pay damages for allegedly stealing technology. The publisher claims it invented and owns the underlying tech inside of the Rift, and that it is entitled to a significant chunk of the $2 billion that Facebook paid to acquire Oculus VR and potentially more.