Facebook’s Parent Company Leaves Frustrated Virtual Reality Pioneer

Meta directed The Associated Press on Saturday to a tweet by Andrew Bosworth, its chief technology officer, and head of its reality laboratories, in response to an inquiry regarding Carmack’s resignation. “It is impossible for us to overstate your impact on our work, and the entire industry,” Bosworth wrote in a grateful tweet to Carmack.

Carmack’s departure occurs at a time when Meta’s CEO Zuckerberg has been struggling with widespread perceptions that he is wasting billions of money trying to establish Menlo Park’s California company in the “metaverse,” an artificial world full of avatars of real-life people.

While the metaverse losses are mounting, Facebook and its affiliate services like Instagram have been experiencing a decline in advertising which brings in the majority of the company’s revenue. Recession fears, increased competition from TikTok and tighter privacy controls on Apple’s iPhone have all contributed to the decline.

These challenges caused Meta’s stock loss of nearly two-thirds this year. This has resulted in $575 billion in shareholder wealth.

Even though Carmack was only part-time at Meta, his dismay seems to have amplified the concerns over Zuckerberg’s attempts to be as dominant in virtual reality as Facebook has been in social media networking since Zuckerberg started it nearly 20 years ago when he was still attending Harvard University.

With the purchase of Oculus headset maker Oculus by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, Zuckerberg started to explore virtual reality. Carmack was Oculus’ chief technology officer at the time. He joined Facebook shortly after the deal was closed. Carmack is best known for co-creating the video game Doom.

Federal regulators now want to restrict Zuckerberg’s influence in virtual reality. 

They have stopped him from buying Within Unlimited, a fitness app for the metaverse. In a trial that pitted the Federal Trade Commission against Meta about the fate of the deal, Carmack testified this week. The trial is set to resume Monday in San Jose. Zuckerberg is expected to testify.

In his resignation letter, Carmack expressed his disappointment with Meta’s current virtual reality headset, Quest 2. The headset was “almost exactly what” he wanted from the beginning of his Oculus tenure.

“It’s successful, and successful products help make the world better,” Carmack stated about Quest 2. “It could have all happened a bit quicker and been going better, but we built something pretty close To The Right Thing.”

Carmack concluded his letter by stating that it was possible to do so if you just continue with the current practices. However, there are many areas for improvement. Fill your products with “Give a Damn!” and make better decisions.