Oculus and ZeniMax have settled their $500 million suit

Oculus and ZeniMax have settled their $500 million suit

ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda and id Software, has settled its suit with Facebook over the creation of the Oculus Rift headset, although the terms of the settlement have not been shared. The suit pertained to what ZeniMax claimed was the theft of technologies developed by John Carmack while he was working for id Software under the Zenimax banner.

The timeline, as far as Zenimax was concerned, saw Carmack meet and work with the young VR protégé Palmer Luckey on early prototypes of the Oculus Rift headset. He then left id Software to work for Oculus, taking all of his designs and developments with him. ZeniMax claimed that those designs belonged to the company since he worked on them at the time of its development.

Oculus and Facebook didn't agree, but the courts initially awarded ZeniMax $500 million of a possible $6 billion. That figure was made up of $250 million from Oculus, $100 million from ex-Oculus CEO, Brendan Iribe, and $50 million from Palmer Luckey, as per GameSpot. However, that figure was later reduced to $250 million as part of Oculus' appeal.

Oculus continued to fight the ruling and it now seems that a settlement has been agreed between the two parties. It's not clear what the final figure is, but ZeniMax has publicly stated that it's happy with the outcome. It has also wrapped up the private suit it filed against John Carmack, though it's not clear at this time if a separate lawsuit against Samsung has also been settled.