Carmack departed id following failed VR proposal

John Carmack ultimately left id Software because Zenimax wouldn’t approve of a proposed VR deal with Oculus Rift, the industry veteran has revealed.

Speaking with USA Today, Carmack admitted he’d still be with id today in some capacity – if the studio’s parent company Zenimax would have approved of his VR proposal to bring id’s licensed titles (including the yet-to-be-released Doom 4) to the Oculus Rift headset.

It would have been a huge win. It seemed like a sensible plan for me,” he said.

I would have been content probably staying there working with the people and technology that I know and the work we were doing,” he said. But they couldn’t come together on that which made me really sad. It was just unfortunate. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to do any work on VR while at id software, I decided to not renew my contract.”

Carmack added that his exit from a company he himself helped found was a bittersweet” ending, while the new beginning as Oculus CTO has been anything but slow-paced.

We’d create majestic, wonderful things at the end that we have every right to be proud of,” he said. While Oculus is still kind of scary fast in terms of all the people coming on there is still the sense that a handful of us are going to crunch really hard and get something done by next Thursday.”