Oculus owes half a billion dollars to ZeniMax for copyright infringment

ZeniMax versus Facebook ended today with $500 million for the former and a tiny bit of retribution for the latter.

ZeniMax has been awarded half a billion dollars after a judge found that Oculus co-founder, Palmer Luckey, did not comply with a non-disclosure agreement.

According to Polygon, Oculus is paying out $200 million for breaking NDA and $50 million for copyright infringement. Oculus and Luckey each have to pay an extra $50 million for false designation — essentially, when someone falsely claims their origin — while Brendan Iribe, the former CEO of Oculus, will have to pay $150 million.

The ZeniMax versus Facebook (née Oculus) trial started last month and included testimonials from several of the prominent tech figures involved, like id Software co-founder John Carmack, who was questioned about copying code before leaving to work at Facebook, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself.

ZeniMax had referred to the incident as a "heist."

The trial alleged that Luckey, Iribe, and half a dozen ex-ZeniMax employees had built the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset based on research and copyrighted code that was originally conducted by ZeniMax. ZeniMax wanted $4 billion in compensation, half of which would be awarded for punitive damages. But Oculus had managed to argue down the verdict by claiming that the lawsuit was driven by emotions rather than facts, citing that the company had referred to the initial incident as a "heist." Oculus denied those allegations.

Oculus said it would appeal the briefing, though we're not entirely sure what will happen to the Oculus Rift, or whether the case will have any impact on sales.