TECH

Virtual reality pioneer John Carmack leaves Facebook father

A leading video game creator who helped spearhead Facebook's expansion into virtual reality has resigned from the social networking service's corporate parent company after becoming disillusioned with the way the technology is being managed.

John Carmack severed his ties with Meta Platforms, a holding company created last year by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a letter on Friday that vented his frustration at becoming an executive consultant on virtual reality.

"There's no way to sugarcoat this; I think our organization is operating at half the efficiency that would make me happy," Carmack wrote in the letter, which he shared on Facebook. ""Some may scoff and claim we're doing great, but others will laugh and say, 'Half? I have! I have an efficiency room!'"

In response to a question about Carmack's resignation and comments, Meta on Saturday directed the Associated Press to a tweet from its chief technology officer and head of its reality labs, Andrew Bosworth. "It's impossible to overstate the impact you've had on our work and the industry as a whole," Bosworth wrote in his grateful tweet addressed to Carmack.

Carmack's departure comes as Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, grapples with the widespread perception that he is wasting billions of dollars trying to establish the Menlo Park, Calif., company in the "metaverse" - an artificial world filled with avatars of real people. 🇧🇷

While losses from the metaverse have risen, Facebook and affiliated services like Instagram have seen a drop in advertising, which generates most of the company's revenue. The decline was caused by a combination of recession fears, tougher competition from other social networking services like TikTok and privacy controls on Apple's iPhone that have made it harder to track people's interests to help sell ads.

These challenges have caused Meta's shares to lose nearly two-thirds of their value so far this year, wiping out about $575 billion in shareholder equity.

Though Carmack only worked part-time at Meta, the discouragement he expressed seems to magnify questions hanging over Zuckerberg's efforts to become as dominant in virtual reality as Facebook has been in social media since he started the service nearly 20 years ago. years while attending Harvard University.

Zuckerberg began exploring virtual reality in earnest in 2014, with Facebook's $2 billion purchase of headset maker Oculus. At the time, Carmack was the chief technology officer at Oculus and joined Facebook after the deal closed. Before joining Oculus, Carmack was best known as the co-creator of the video game Doom.

Federal regulators are now trying to limit Zuckerberg's influence in virtual reality by blocking his attempt to buy Within Unlimited, which makes a fitness app designed for the metaverse.

Carmack testified earlier this week in a trial pitting the Federal Trade Commission against Meta over the fate of the deal. Zuckerberg is expected to testify at some point in the trial, which is expected to resume on Monday in San Jose, Calif.

Despite his frustration with how things are going at Meta, Carmack praised his latest virtual reality headset, the Quest 2, in his resignation letter. He described the headset as "almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning" of his tenure at Oculus.

"It's a success, and successful products make the world a better place," Carmack said of Quest 2. "Everything could have happened a little faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we've built something pretty close to that. The right thing."

But Carmack ended his letter with this plea: "It might actually be possible to get there just by moving forward with current practices, but there's a lot of room for improvement. Make better decisions and fill your products with 'Give a fuck!'"

by Michael Liedtke