With yesterday’s news that Brendan Iribe has parted ways with Oculus, two of the VR company’s key figureheads have left in the past 18 months. However, another major player doesn’t appear to have any plans to follow suit.
Replying to UploadVR’s Ian Hamilton on Twitter, Oculus CTO John Carmack confirmed that he doesn’t intend to leave Facebook following the upcoming launch of its latest headset, Oculus Quest. The kit is coming next spring for $399.
I do intend to stay at Facebook past the launch of Oculus Quest. https://t.co/a4T9BLK4A3
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) October 22, 2018
Both Iribe and Oculus co-founder and Rift inventor Palmer Luckey left Facebook under the shadow of a 2017 courtroom battle between their company and ZeniMax Media. The latter claimed that Carmack himself had stolen technology from ZeniMax-owned Bethesda when moving from one of its studios, id Software, to Oculus in 2013. Oculus has since halved the $500 million jury decision it was ordered to pay ZeniMax to $250 million, while Carmack last week announced that he had settled his own personal disputes with ZeniMax, launched following the courtroom drama.
Another Oculus co-founder, Nate Mitchell, is staying with the company to head up its PC team, though we haven’t heard from other key players such as Michael Abrash.
Since joining Oculus, Carmack has primarily concerned himself with the development of the company’s mobile headsets and compatible apps, including Gear VR, Oculus Go and now Quest. He dedicated a good portion of his talk at last month’s Oculus Connect 5 keynote to the latter device, which is Facebook’s first to support inside-out tracking.
