Oculus issues statement regarding the ZeniMax legal notice

Following on from last week's news that ZeniMax had filed a legal notice, accusing John Carmack of taking the "firm's intellectual property with him to Oculus," Oculus has now issued a statement to clarify a few points.

The statement was released to Polygon today and it said that ZeniMax had cancelled virtual reality support for Doom 3 BFG after Oculus refused to give the company a "non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus."

According to the statement, the reason John Carmack left id Software was because ZeniMax prevented him from working on virtual reality and stopped investing in the technology across the company. Which is certainly similar to what Carmack told USA Today in February.

The statement also denied ZeniMax's claim that Carmack had "provided key ZeniMax technology to Oculus."

"We are disappointed but not surprised by ZeniMax’s actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false," read the statement. "Despite the fact that the full source code for the Oculus SDK is available online (developer.oculusvr.com), ZeniMax has never identified any ‘stolen’ code or technology."

Regarding the same claim, the statement addded, "[ZeniMax] did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, ZeniMax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has Zenimax now made these claims through its lawyers."

The statement also replied to ZeniMax's claim last week that "Palmer Luckey acknowledged in writing ZeniMax's legal ownership of this intellectual property," saying, "ZeniMax is misstating the purpose and language of the ZeniMax non-disclosure agreement that Palmer Luckey signed."

We'll have more on the story as it develops.