John Carmack leaves Meta Platform due to quarter efficiency
John Carmack, the renowned video game creator who helped spearhead Facebook’s plunge into virtual reality, has decided to part ways with the social media giant’s parent company, Meta Platforms.
Before joining Oculus, which Facebook acquired in 2014, Carmack was acknowledged for co-creating the widely popular video game Doom.
“There is no way to sugarcoat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy,” Carmack wrote, expressing his dissatisfaction. “Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say, ‘Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!”
In response to the resignation, the firm’s Chief Technology Officer and Head of Reality Labs, Andrew Bosworth, took to Twitter to express his gratitude to Carmack: “It is impossible to overstate the impact you’ve had on our work and the industry as a whole.”
The departure comes at an inconvenient time for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has been trying to establish the Menlo Park, California-based company in the “metaverse” — a digitalized world full of avatars of real people.
Amid the mounting losses in metaverse, the firm has been struggling to remain profitable due to a decrease in advertising income caused by recession fears, along with privacy controls on Apple’s iPhones that make it difficult to track user’s interests. As a result, Meta’s stock has dropped by almost two-thirds this year, wiping out nearly $575 billion in shareholder wealth.
Before joining Oculus, which Facebook acquired in 2014, Carmack was acknowledged for co-creating the widely popular video game Doom.
Interestingly, he testified in the Federal Trade Commission trial against Meta which seeks to block Zuckerberg’s attempted buyout of Within Unlimited – a fitness app designed for the metaverse.
On Monday, the trial in San Jose, California will reconvene, and Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify.
Despite his frustrations, Carmack commended the Quest 2 – Meta’s latest virtual reality headset – in his resignation letter.
He labelled it as “almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning” of his Oculus tenure.
“It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place,” he added. “It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.
Make better decisions and fill your products with ‘Give a Damn!'”.
