Oculus CTO John Carmack Is Suing ZeniMax For $22.5 Million

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.

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[HornWumpus]

Be fair, he only invented the 3d shooter. Not like he wrote 'minecruft'.

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[frovingslosh]

He wrote a 3d shooter. He certainly didn't invent the 3D shooter. There were other, better, richer, shooters out there when his first shooter came out. What he did bring to the table was a shareware shooter (shareware for the first part anyway) and a system where others could build additional levels for his products.

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[HornWumpus]

'Stellar 7'? Seriously what? Name them?

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[SCPaPaJoe]

Second that. My first exposure to ID was Wolfenstein 3D. What came before? Wizardry? Before you jump all over me, I know Wolf 3D wasn't "3D", but I remember it blew me away with the first person point of view.

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[HornWumpus]

If 'Stellar 7' qualified as pre wolf3d 3d shooter, then so did 'Battlezone'.

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[fluffernutter]

Ah Stellar 7, that game I really really wanted to get into, but ended up getting bored after the first couple levels.

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[HornWumpus]

It was pretty cool eye candy in it's day. But yeah, Battlezone ++

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[painandgreed]

If 'Stellar 7' qualified as pre wolf3d 3d shooter, then so did 'Battlezone'.

Hey! You're forgetting Duck Hunt!

Re:A paltry $150 million?

[frovingslosh]

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.

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[someone1234]

Except ultima underworld is not shooter?

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[Wraithlyn]

OK I'll bite.

What "better, richer, shooters" were on the scene when Wolfenstein 3D first came out?

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[frovingslosh]

Maybe, I overstated. Ultima was all of that, but maybe it was the only one.

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[Wraithlyn]

Ultima? WTF are you even talking about?

Early 90's Ultima (eg VI and VII) are 2D tile-based RPGs [youtu.be]. While great games, they are neither first-person nor shooters.

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[HornWumpus]

Akalabeth (Ultima -1) had 3d views, on Apple ][s. It took one keystroke of input per frame. You could even shoot arrows IIRC. It has been a while.

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[frovingslosh]

Ultima Underworld

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[Wraithlyn]

Alright fair enough, that is very impressive 3D for the time. BUT:

- It ain't a shooter
- It had much higher system requirements (Wolf3D's engine was a true breakthrough in terms of performance)
- It came out at pretty much the same time as Wolf3D (two months earlier)

Carmack deserves his accolades (and not "for bringing Shareware to the table"). After Wolf3D he went on to do Doom and Quake. He was (easily) the most accomplished graphics-engine programmer of the 90's.

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[Anonymous Coward]

It's not difficult to argue that he invented the "modern" 3d shooter because Wolf3D is more similar to every 3d shooter that followed than the earliest 3d shooters were to wolf3d. You're also dead wrong about there being better and richer shooters when Wolf3D came out. You'd also be wrong to suggest there was a richer or better shooter available when Doom was released. Finally, you'd definitely be wrong to suggest there was a richer or better shooter available when Quake was released. id absolutely domi

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[painandgreed]

id absolutely dominated and totally redefined the 3d shooter genre during the period from 1990-1995.

Maybe on the PC, but I always liked Marathon the best. There was a reason MS bought Bungie to make Halo.

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[Man On Pink Corner]

ROFL. Modern first-person shooters before Wolf3D? I don't think so.

You are standing in an open field west of a small house.
Visible through the window of the house is a troll, bathed in
the sickly green light of a VT100 terminal. The troll looks up
from his keyboard and glares at you.

There is a mailbox here.

>OPEN MAILBOX
Opening the mailbox reveals a rocket launcher.

Suddenly the front door of the house flies open with a bang.
The troll stomps out of the house indignantly.

>

MOD PARENT UP

[serviscope_minor]

I have no mod points, but that had me chuckling for ages.

I also love the implication that the text adventure has a feature where you can troll.

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[Man On Pink Corner]

I was hoping for a "Troll" mod, but the thread was already pretty much dead by the time I saw it. :(

+5 Troll

[Tenebrousedge]

As the man says, this is one of those rare comments that deserves a +5 Troll moderation. Kudos :)

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[puddingebola]

My father was a miner for 34 years, and he suffered from both minecruft and black lung.

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[OrangeTide]

There are centuries of legal precedent of what to do with a contract if one party fails to hold up his end of the deal, usually property reverts ownership and damages may be possible. Often contracts have clauses that permit additional fines on top of the reverting of the property in question. It might be possible for Carmack to keep the $22.5m and his company and take ZeniMax to court for additional fines. But more than likely ZeniMax wouldn't have signed such a contract, and pursuing the failure to pay is

Zenimax

[kamapuaa]

Wow - so they proved in court that Carmack was involved in stealing trade secrets worth $500 million, and he still expects to be promptly paid?

If I was convicted in court of stealing from a company, I wouldn't expect a paycheck. I guess that's one more way the rich executives are different from the rest of us.

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[dstyle5]

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.

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[Registered Coward v2]

Wow - so they proved in court that Carmack was involved in stealing trade secrets worth $500 million, and he still expects to be promptly paid?

If I was convicted in court of stealing from a company, I wouldn't expect a paycheck. I guess that's one more way the rich executives are different from the rest of us.

It's a separate action. He left, they owed him money and he wants what they agreed to pay. They can argue they shouldn't have to, or that any award should be used to offset any money he owes them; but if they owe hm the money he should get paid.

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[HornWumpus]

He's pretty damn rich as it is.

Smart people do dumb things....

[NimbleSquirrel]

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.

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[zifn4b]

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.

Correct. Solving complex mathematics and software engineering problems is a completely different skill set than dealing with irrational people in business systems. For those that are familiar with MBTI, Carmack is probably either INTJ or INTP whereas the people that negotiate business deals and tend to rise into top leadership are ENTJ's. These two types of people operate completely differently and use tactics that are foreign concepts to each other. In order to deal with this dynamic, it requires one t

MBTI

[Tenebrousedge]

MBTI is not empirical and has some extremely significant flaws. [wikipedia.org] It's not even good pseudoscience.

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[zifn4b]

MBTI is not empirical and has some extremely significant flaws. [wikipedia.org] It's not even good pseudoscience.

You should get a psychology degree and come back when you're more educated. First of all, I don't think anyone ever claimed that personality profiling like DISC and MBTI are 100% perfect. It's not a panacea. However, I challenge you to provide an alternative that is better. Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it's useless. Even Freudian psychology involving the Ego, ID and Super ID is flawed, more flawed than MBTI and DISC. There is much more research to be done and better models to create. We

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[zifn4b]

Introverts tend to get bullied and taken advantage of by certain extroverted types because they see it as weakness to be exploited. They have a lot of success at doing it. If you want to be resilient, you have to learn to defend yourself. This is akin to learning fighting styles to be resilient on the metaphorical street...