As reported by the New York Times (opens in new tab) (readers may encounter a paywall), John Carmack has left his position at Meta. Carmack previously served as CTO of Oculus and remained with the company after it was acquired by Facebook (now Meta) in 2014.

After an internal announcement about Carmack's departure was leaked to the press, the developer published it in full on his public Facebook (opens in new tab) account, saying, "This is the end of my decade in VR. I have mixed feelings."

Carmack praised the Quest 2 as hardware, writing that the headset is "what I wanted to see from the beginning: mobile hardware, inside-out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4K (or so) screen, and cost effectiveness." Carmack is heartened by the Quest line's sales success and mass adoption, although he has reservations about the software. "The problem," Carmack writes, "is efficiency. The programmer calls Meta "an organization that knows nothing but inefficiency."

"We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources," Carmack continues later in his post.

"But we are constantly self-sabotaging and squandering our efforts," he adds, and he believes that Meta "operates at half the efficiency that [he] could be satisfied with."

Carmack elaborates that although he is an influential voice at Meta, he is by no means a "driving force." Company politics are not his specialty, preferring to focus on technology."

However, the post ends on an optimistic note, stating that Carmack is ready to lead the world in VR implementation as long as Meta makes "better decisions and fills its products with "Give a Damn!

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Carmack is best known as one of the co-founders of id Software, where he led the development of the technology behind such classics as Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake, and laid much of the foundation for modern 3D rendering. in addition to his contributions to development at Oculus/Meta Carmack's involvement with both companies and his advocacy for VR gave credibility to both projects as VR struggled to reach the masses for much of the past decade.

Carmack's current focus is his startup Keen Technologies (open in new tab), perhaps named after id's early platformer series, Commander Keen. Keen's focus is on artificial intelligence (AGI), a branch of AI focused on mimicking the holistic, adaptive intelligence of humans, as opposed to pursuing narrow applications such as AI art generation or graphical and scientific simulations.

This can be read as nothing more than a defeat for Meta and comes at an unfortunate time for the company. Hardware losses are common in the gaming industry, but as of July, Meta's Reality Lab division was losing nearly $1 billion a month (opens in new tab); Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees in November (opens in new tab), while political and privacy concerns continue to plague Facebook and Instagram, and previews of the company's "Metaverse" have been widely mocked (opens in new tab).