John Carmack has been keenly involved in the VR space for a decade at this point, having joined Oculus before its sale to Facebook, and remaining on as CTO as the company transitioned to Meta. Carmack has been outspoken in his criticisms of the company previously and now, he is officially stepping down. 

Carmack announced this internally with a memo that swiftly leaked to the press. Carmack later posted the memo himself in a public announcement of his resignation from Meta. Ultimately, it sounds like Carmack got sick of internal politics and lack of efficiency within Meta's VR team.

“This is the end of my decade in VR. I have mixed feelings,”, Carmack said. He explains that while Quest 2 is “almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning”, there is a big issue with efficiency at Meta Reality Labs.

“We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy.”

Carmack goes on to explain that while he has tried to use his voice at the highest levels of the company to push things in a better direction, he was unable to “set a direction and have a team actually stick to it”. The memo ends on a slightly more positive note though, saying that “no company is better positioned” to bring the “value of VR” to the masses than Meta.

Moving forward, Carmack will be running a new startup company and from the sounds of it, it won't be VR-related.

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KitGuru Says: Considering all the money Zuckerburg has been quite publicly injecting into VR and AR projects, we haven't seen that much progress publicly.  The Quest 2 remains as a solid choice for those looking to play VR games, but it still feels like the company could be doing more, particularly on the game development front. 

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