ZeniMax accuses Carmack of tech theft in Oculus lawsuit

Bethesda owner ZeniMax has amended its lawsuit with Oculus to include accusations of theft and deception.

Game Informer reports that the company now alleges that id Software co-founder and Oculus’ current chief technology Carmack copied thousands of documents from a computer at ZeniMax to a USB storage device” that were not returned after he left the company.

Furthermore, it also claims that following his departure from ZeniMax he returned to ZeniMax’s premises to take a customized tool for developing VR Technology belonging to ZeniMax that itself is part of ZeniMax’s VR technology”.

As if this were not enough, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is accused of deceiving the public by passing off ZeniMax-developed technology as Oculus’ own creation. Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe is also accused of lying about the origins of the Oculus tech.

Says the lawsuit: "Oculus, at Iribe’s direction, disseminated to the press the false and fanciful story that Luckey was the brilliant inventor of VR technology who had developed that technology in his parents’ garage.

In fact, that story was utterly and completely false: Luckey lacked the training, expertise, resources, or know-how to create commercially viable VR technology, his computer programming skills were rudimentary, and he relied on ZeniMax’s computer program code and games to demonstrate the prototype Rift.”

Oculus said in a statement to Game Informer: "This complaint filed by ZeniMax is one-sided and conveys only ZeniMax’s interpretation of the story."

The lawsuit between ZeniMax and Oculus has been simmering for over two years. Oculus has claimed that ZeniMax’s efforts are nothing more than an attempt to cash-in on Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus.