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Small mistakes led to a $500 million verdict against Oculus

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Mistakes in doing everyday business led to a $500 million verdict against Facebook’s Oculus division in a legal battle with ZeniMax.

ZeniMax sued Oculus, Facebook, and well-known virtual reality leaders John Carmack and Palmer Luckey for misappropriating trade secrets after Carmack left ZeniMax’s id Software and went to work at Oculus. The case has snowballed into a nightmare for Facebook, and it presents scary possible outcomes for VR developers.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.