The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Facebook Inc., released on March 28, 2016. (Photo : Getty Images/ Kevork Djansezian)
ZeniMax, Bethesda's parent company, has filed an injunction in order to stop Oculus VR from selling the headset. The request is made due to the fact that the Facebook-owned company uses stolen technology.
According to Law 360, as cited by Game Spot, ZeniMax wants to block the sales of the Oculus products using the stolen codes. Specifically, the mobile and PC developer kits as well as the technology which enables the Rift to be integrated with the Unreal and Unity development engines.
However, should the injunction be denied, ZeniMax still wants to get a cut from the profits of products that used their intellectual properties. They mean to get at least 20 percent cut from Oculus's profits for at least a decade, as the 500 million-dollar settlement was not enough incentive for the VR company to continue the infringement.
Oculus's official statement about the matter is that the motion changes nothing. The original verdict still stands as "legally flawed and factually unwarranted." They now plan to file their own motion to toss the jury verdict out of the window and file an appeal to allow them to get past the litigation posed by ZeniMax.
According to Game Rant, if Oculus loses its dev kit capabilities, future Oculus Games might not be properly tested before being released. After all, developers will not have a means of testing and creating games properly if they do not have access to the Oculus Rift dev kits.
Also, without Unreal and Unity support, developers will need to switch to another engine supported by the Oculus Rift and learn a new development tool. After all, both of the engines are widely popular in the industry, and it helps in developing games for a variety of consoles and platforms.
Ultimately, if ZeniMax succeeds, developers might be discouraged to develop games for the Rift simply because it will take too much work. However, it is still uncertain whether or not Bethesda's parent company will succeed.
Here is a video of the Oculus Rift:
