Palmer Luckey insists he didn't steal VR code for Oculus
iD Software parent company ZeniMax is suing Oculus for $2 billion.
Yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand to testify in a lawsuit against Oculus, and today it was Palmer Luckey's turn. The founder of Oculus VR -- who has remained out of sight since his role in funding political trolls came to light -- sold his startup to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, but ZeniMax (parent company of iD Software) claims its tech is based on code Oculus CTO John Carmack wrote while still an employee. According to Bloomberg, Luckey testified that while the company's software ran in a demonstration for investors, he also said "I didn't take confidential code...I ran it and demonstrated it through the headset. It is not true I took the code."
The Zenimax lawsuit challenges Oculus' origin story, claiming that Luckey lacked the expertise to develop VR technology. Gizmodo reports that a line of questioning focused on his lack of a college degree, while Facebook's lawyers pumped up his hobbyist interests and stories of electronics tinkering in the garage.
Back in 2014, Carmack stated that ZeniMax owns the code he wrote while working there but "they don't own VR." According to Oculus, Luckey sent Carmack a headset in 2012, and showed off a ported version of Doom 3 for it, before leaving iD to join the company in 2013. UploadVR says that former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe is expected to testify as well, and a jury verdict could occur as soon as next week.
