ZeniMax v. Oculus: Jury orders Facebook’s VR company to pay $500 million because Palmer Luckey broke his NDA

The jury has come in on one of the first major lawsuits for the burgeoning virtual reality industry.

Facebook’s Oculus VR must pay $500 million to ZeniMax Media, but not because the former stole any proprietary information from ZeniMax (parent company of Fallout and Skyrim publisher Bethesda) to bring the Rift head-mounted VR display to consumers. Instead, the jury found that Oculus cofounder Palmer Luckey violated a nondisclosure agreement that he had with ZeniMax, and that violation serves as the basis for the half-a-billion dollar penalty.