Oculus has not been having good times of late. From facing lawsuits regarding its tech from Zenimax, which has brought in claims that directly involve founder Palmer Luckey, to being ordered to pay substantial fines, the company has been the source of a lot of headache to parent Facebook. The fallout from the case is affecting the company in other ways as well and Palmer Luckey has decided to leave Facebook, which acquired Oculus a couple of years ago.
At just 24 years old, Luckey is one of the youngest founders to have generated this kind of publicity. Oculus’s journey started out of his parent’s garage, where he tinkered with building a VR headset for the first time. Actually, Luckey’s first love were gaming consoles and he was looking for ways of taking them apart and rebuilding them. Following a shifting of his interest to VR and a meeting with John Cormack, Luckey rose to prominence after he showed off one of his VR consoles at a gaming event.
From then on, things started rolling for Luckey. Not only did he run a highly successful Kickstarter campaign for Oculus, he also managed to grab the attention of a clutch of investors. This culminated in 2014, with Facebook doling out $2 Billion to acquire the headset maker. Subsequently, Luckey’s net worth rose and as per estimates, lies in the hundreds of millions.
All those were good times. Luckey hit a bad patch of late with the Zenimax case. Not only was Oculus ordered to fine $500 million, Luckey was personally fined $50 million for breaching his NDA.
That was not all though, and the fact that he was funding a pro-Trump troll group called Nimble America, also gained him a lot of bad publicity. Indeed, he was one of the very few in the Valley to have been openly known as a pro-Trump guy. Well, his candidate might have won but Luckey had to come out and issue a public apology after devs threatened to leave the Oculus platform.
I am deeply sorry that my actions are negatively impacting the perception of Oculus and its partners. The recent news stories about me do not accurately represent my views… my actions were my own and do not represent Oculus. I’m sorry for the impact my actions are having on the community.
However, it appears as if all this trouble has directly affected Palmer Luckey’s sojourn at Facebook. The Oculus founder is leaving the company, that much has been confirmed. Although where he will go from here is not known. Meanwhile, the day to day workings at Facebook with its strong executive team including a VR division led by ex-Xiaomi Hugo Barra, is unlikely to be particularly affected.
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