John Carmack leaves Meta
After nearly ten years as head of VR hardware at Meta, John Carmack has left the company. He rages against the crippling inefficiencies at Meta.
The id Software co-founder and Doom co-creator officially left Meta on Friday, according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider and confirmed by The New York Times.
In his farewell message, Carmack railed against crippling inefficiencies at Meta, accusing the company of constantly sabotaging itself and wasting resources. He also lamented that he had found it a "struggle" to influence Meta's overall direction and that he was "tired of the struggle." "We have a ridiculous amount of staff and resources, but we're constantly sabotaging ourselves and wasting our energies."
In his Meta Connect keynote in October, John Carmack talked about his internal efforts to push development of a "super cheap, super light" Meta VR headset that could cost or weigh "$250 and 250 grams." He stressed the importance of offering a VR headset that is affordable to a broader population, especially those who can't currently afford to get into the technology.
Unfortunately, he said, Meta has instead focused its recent VR hardware efforts on the heavily over-designed and $1,500 Quest Pro, while the cheaper, lighter headset has fallen by the wayside. Carmack, however, stressed that he would continue to try to develop and release the headset. "We're not building that headset today, but I'm going to keep trying," he said during the keynote, according to a report from Ars Technica, somewhat despairingly.
It's a shame that Meta decided to invest its resources in a more expensive headset instead of focusing on a more affordable model that could potentially introduce a larger number of people to the VR world, Carmack said.
