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Comment by Arjuna | Hacker News Reader

Here is a copy of the complaint [1]. Originally posted here [2]. Interesting reading...

[1] http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4490157/1-main.pdf

[2] http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/21/5739086/oculus-vr-and-its-...

It is a shame that such a delightful piece of technology is getting mired in human politics. The complaint, being from one viewpoint, definitely portrays a grey area during those two years of ZeniMax "nicely asking". I guess I am just a little upset at the prospect that this could delay or effect the quality of Oculus. I do not know the VR industry enough to know if this lawsuit would cause side effects in any competitors.

Edit: Clarified "this lawsuit" and "side effects in any competitors".

It's not about politics, it's about grabbing some money from Oculus now that Facebook backed them up. Where there is a lot of cash, there's usually a lawsuit not far away. And most of the time this is settled out of court for undisclosed amounts.

Did you read the complaint, or at least the first few pages of it? I'm as big a fan of the Rift as anyone, but as another commenter said, it is "pretty damning" if you look at it objectively.

Eh, not really, because it's the plaintiff's complaint. It's supposed to seem damning or the lawyer isn't doing their job. That's like reading an indictment and expecting it to be anywhere close to reality. You can't really start to judge until after the facts are out and everyone has had a chance to address allegations.

I was expecting Carmack's name to appear in the press release. I cannot say I'm disappointed after reading the complaint.

The whole piece reads as if ZeniMax felt that it has somehow acquired possession of Carmack's knowledge (or any other of its employees), which at least for me seems to be totally absurd.

It's not that absurd. A lot of the VR demos used Zenimax games, and many of the videos and interviews were filmed right inside Zenimax offices. Code was written on Zenimax time and file transfers, emails for advice, and more were made over Zenimax email addresses.

Carmack obviously re-wrote all code once leaving Zenimax, but there's a case to be made that Zenimax giving Carmack free reign to work on Oculus while at Zenimax significantly benefited Oculus.

Oculus agreed at some point — offering Zenimax a 2% stake. Zenimax asked for more (amount not specified in the complaint). Oculus response was that the "figure was so far out of the ballpark, we believe there is little hope" — negotiations broke down there.

Weird, but that PDF URL blows up Chrome for me when I click if from there, but not when I click it from the Verge article. It's the same URL.

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