January 2017
THE HEIST
“One of these pictures is cattywampus,” Federal District Judge Ed Kinkeade exclaimed on the morning of January 10, pointing to a photo that ZeniMax was trying to get just moments before the jurors would be sworn in.
The photo in question—a grainy, previously undisclosed security cam image—depicted John Carmack exiting id Software during a summer night in 2013. To just about everyone in Judge Kinkeade’s Dallas County courtroom—the defendants (Luckey, Iribe, and Carmack), their attorneys, and a packed house full of reporters—there was nothing unusual or spectacular about this grainy image. But ZeniMax looked forward to clearing that up, among many other things, during what would turn out to be a three-week-long trial. And shortly after Judge Kinkeade ruled in favor of admitting the cattywampus photo, Tony Sammi—ZeniMax’s lead attorney—stepped in front of the jury to begin his opening statement.
“This case has technology in it,” ZeniMax’s Tony Sammi began, “but really this case fundamentally breaks down into something much more simple: this case is about theft. This case is about stealing something very valuable. This case is about the Defendants stealing our technology, selling it for $3 billion—that’s billion with a B—and then covering it up by destroying evidence. That’s fundamentally what this case is about. It’s one of the biggest technology heists ever.”
Sammi paused to let that sink in with the jury and reporters covering this trial, and then launched into the journey that had led to this moment. “I have been on this case from the very beginning . . . my job in the last two and half years has been to act as sort of a lead investigator, to uncover the truth, and what have we searched through? Over a million pages of documents, terabytes of electronic data, computer source code, all to find the evidence and show it to you. So what did we find?”
Sammi then teased the jury with a sampling of what ZeniMax had uncovered:
Before diving deeper into these allegations, Sammi decided to take a step back and give the jury some context for what they’d be hearing in the weeks ahead.
“First of all, don’t let anybody tell you there’s something special in the water in Silicon Valley—that ‘only good technology can come from there.’ All of this happened right here . . . Now, let’s talk for a minute about what was going on in the world [of] virtual reality around 2011 . . . in 2011/2012 there was no commercially viable VR. And the evidence shows that what you could get that was small was cheap, but bad. It would not fool your brain. So everyone is looking for the holy grail. John Carmack said, let’s solve it in software. Instead of using $100,000.00 of equipment, let’s solve it in software. Make something cheap, the headset, because you have to sell it, and make the software do it. We call that software the VR engine, the VR engine. Without the VR engine, there is no VR . . . [and] what did John Carmack do after he made the VR engine? He told people about it.”
One of those people was, of course, Palmer Luckey. “Carmack ran into Mr. Luckey on the internet,” Sammi explained. “And Mr. Carmack said: I’m looking for parts. Will you let me buy from you some optics so I can use it for my VR engine? Now, Mr. Luckey sent Mr. Carmack something in a box just like this, a medium-sized USPS Priority Mail box. Very important for the case. What was in this box? What is the evidence going to show you? The evidence is going to show what was in this box was a screen, lenses [that cost] $11.00, a plastic housing, and a video card which is a piece of hardware that makes the screen be able to accept input . . . What wasn’t in this box was: No software, no VR engine, no sensor, no reliable power supply.”
After laying down the backstory, Sammi played a few clips from E3 2012—clips of John Carmack giving VR demos to reporters. “Everybody went wild. ZeniMax was the belle of the ball . . . Now, shortly after E3, the evidence shows that Mr. Iribe and Mr. Luckey connected . . . What happens? Here we go. They have a secret meeting.”
On cue, Sammi pointed the jurors to a blown-up photograph that ZeniMax had been able to uncover during the discovery phase of this lawsuit. It’s a photo of Luckey giving Iribe a VR demo in a dimly lit room. In the corner of this image, a timestamp confirmed ZeniMax’s timeline. Even more damning: Luckey and Iribe appear to be joined by two previously unmentioned “associates.”
“What happened next,” Sammi continued, “is two days later, on July 6, 2012, they had papers drawn up to divide the company Oculus amongst themselves.” Then about three weeks later, “Mr. Luckey and [Iribe’s longtime business partner] Mr. Antonov are sitting at Valve. What are they doing? They’re showing Valve the VR engine . . . Remember the text messages I talked about that the Defendants didn’t want you to see? Here they are. Here is the first one.”
MICHAEL ANTONOV: Can we leave it with Valve? (It means that we also have to leave SW [software] that Carmack just warned about . . . )
BRENDAN IRIBE: Will they give us a video endorsement?
BRENDAN IRIBE: I’d leave it if they give us an endorsement, otherwise, I’d tell them we have to get approval from Carmack/Bethesda.
“Now my time is up . . .” Sammi said after sharing a few more examples of private employee communications. “I’m going to leave you with this: Chapter one was the heist. Chapter two was the payoff. Chapter three was the coverup. You, ladies and gentlemen, get to write Chapter four.”
TO HELP WRITE THAT FOURTH CHAPTER IN FAVOR OF ZENIMAX, THEIR MOST compelling firsthand witness took the stand on January 20.
“Could you please introduce yourself to the jury?” Sammi asked the witness. “You have been sitting here for the whole thing.”
“Good morning. My name is Robert Altman. I am the founder, chairman, and CEO of ZeniMax Media.”
“And, Mr. Altman, do you have a family? Wife, kids?
“I do. My family is with me here in the courtroom. My wife, Lynda Carter, we’ll be married this month 33 years, and my two children, James and Jessica.”
“Mr. Altman,” Judge Kinkeade interrupted. “They don’t look like you.”
“I hope my children look like my wife, sir!”
After briefly describing his path to founding ZeniMax, Altman was asked the question that everyone had to be wondering: Why did you bring this litigation?
“Well, I didn’t sue out of spite, as has been suggested in this court. And I didn’t sue over sour grapes, over a lost opportunity . . . We thought we were dealing with respectable and honest people. We were dealing in good faith. And what happened was we were treated very badly by these Defendants. Our property was stolen. Our trade secrets were taken. Our copyrights were violated. Contracts were breached. We were lied to, given explanations for things that were insulting. It was all very damaging to our company. And we’re asking this jury to make it right.”
In contrast to that type of behavior, Altman talked about how things worked at ZeniMax—“Our motto is ‘we turn square corners.’ Meaning we don’t take shortcuts.”—and then eventually about what this case was all about: virtual reality.
“We had actually looked at VR technology for a long time,” Altman explained. “Going back into the ’90s. In fact, there was a photograph of the fellow who is our vice president of game development on the cover of PC Gamer Magazine wearing one of those rigs back in the ’90s. So we have looked at this a long time. Bethesda Games Studios had looked at it.”
Not only did ZeniMax Altman reveal that ZeniMax had a long history with VR, but shortly thereafter he let it be known that his company was the one that invented it. “The suggestion that has been made that we backed away from VR is absurd,” Altman said. “We saw the opportunity of VR before the rest of the world. We’re the ones who invented it. We are the ones who took it to E3 . . . But what has happened by the actions of the Defendants, we have now been forced in this position where we don’t get the benefit of the breakthrough technology that we created.”
Throughout the rest of his testimony, Altman expanded on this notion: stating that Palmer Luckey had “no training, no expertise, no ability to create VR”; that “the story that is being told that he invented it is just a myth”; and that, in reality, “it all came together with the special sauce that Mr. Carmack created by March of 2012. Before we ever talked to any of the Defendants.”
Looking on, Luckey—clearly bothered—tried his best to keep an even face. And though he found that rather hard to do at times, something occurred to him: Robert Altman was right about one thing.
THE COMEDY
“One of these pictures is cattywampus,” Federal District Judge Ed Kinkeade exclaimed on the morning of January 10, pointing to a photo that ZeniMax was trying to get just moments before the jurors would be sworn in.
For the third-parties in attendance—particularly the reporters and jurors—Judge Kinkeade’s colorful personality went a long way towards making the proceedings somewhat bearable. Whether using words like “cattywampus” or occasionally interrupting the proceedings to ask layperson questions about the tech being described, Judge Kinkeade’s personality and demeanor was a nice respite from two-plus weeks’ worth of dense, often technical testimonies.
The only thing the courtroom audience seemed to enjoy more than a well-timed, well-phrased cameo from Judge Kinkeade were the moments of unintentional comedy that would occasionally come from those being questioned on the stand. Moments like these:
CARMACK BEING CARMACK
LAWYER: I believe that you firmly think that nobody can own the concept, and I may agree with you there. I don’t think the concept of solving for distortion is yours or mine . . . Now, how I choose to solve that problem, particularly in source code, that’s not open to the public, right, if you’re writing that code at a company, being paid for that company?
JOHN CARMACK: No. But when I discussed at E3 using a GPU to distort an image to correct for it, that’s fairly specific.
LAWYER: Okay. Let me give you this example: I’m going to discuss with you a mode of conveyance that has four wheels, an engine and it uses gasoline and it’s got pistons. And I’m going to stand here for three hours and discuss that. Can you take that and go build a car?
JOHN CARMACK: Yeah, I probably could . . . I did pick up rocket science as a hobby. It wouldn’t be as good as Detroit’s latest, but, yeah, I think I could build an automobile.
CARMACK, AGAIN, BEING CARMACK
LAWYER: Did you know at the time that Palmer Luckey used that technology at a secret meeting in a Long Beach, California, hotel room on July 4, 2012?
JOHN CARMACK: How is it a secret meeting? I was not clear on that.
LAWYER: Yes. Let me ask that. Did you know about it at the time?
JOHN CARMACK: No, I didn’t. That doesn’t make it a secret.
LAWYER: Secret to you, doesn’t it?
JOHN CARMACK: There’s a billion meetings going on in the world that are not secret to me.
LAWYER: And did . . . didn’t you think the purpose . . . are we to believe that you think that the purpose of an NDA means that when you send this technology to Palmer Luckey he can show it to anybody?
JOHN CARMACK: The whole idea of this was that he could show it to people so that he could raise awareness.
NATE BEING . . . HONEST
LAWYER: Do you think that Palmer Luckey single-handedly brought VR back from the dead?
NATE MITCHELL: No
LAWYER: Did you ever read that in an article?
NATE MITCHELL: I have
LAWYER: What do you think about that?
NATE MITCHELL: I would disagree
THE SECRET COMPANY MOTTO
LAWYER: Mr. Altman testified earlier in this trial and he told this jury our motto is “we turn square corners,” and he went on to explain it. And Mr. Willits this morning came in and told the jury that’s the ZeniMax motto. Have you [in your four years as a software engineer at ZeniMax] ever heard Mr. Altman use the phrase “We turn square corners”?
GLORIA KENNICKELL: No.
LAWYER: Have you ever heard those words come out of Mr. Willits’ mouth?
GLORIA KENNICKELL: No.
LAWYER: Have you ever heard anyone at ZeniMax or id use that phrase?
GLORIA KENNICKELL: No. And I’m not sure what it means.
LAWYER: Okay. Is it posted anywhere?
GLORIA KENNICKELL: Not that I know of.
LAWYER: So if this was a motto, it was some kind of secret motto you didn’t know about?
GLORIA KENNICKELL: Potentially, yes.
THE BICYCLE ANALOGY
LAWYER: If this jury finds that Oculus stole virtual reality technology from ZeniMax, improving upon that technology doesn’t make it yours, does it?
MARK ZUCKERBERG: I don’t know . . . I disagree with the premise of your question so it’s kind of hard to get on top of that.
LAWYER: Alright, let’s make it real simple: if you steal my bike and you paint it and put a bell on it, does that make it your bike?
MARK ZUCKERBERG: No . . . [but] I think the analogy to a bike is extremely over-simplistic here.
LAWYER: Probably.
MARK ZUCKERBERG: This would be like someone—
LAWYER: I agree with you.
MARK ZUCKERBERG:—who created a piece of, like, a bar that might go on a bike and then someone built a spaceship out of it.
THE BOX
LAWYER: In 2012, you sent a headset to Mr. Carmack, correct?
PALMER LUCKEY: Yes, I did.
LAWYER: Was it on May 10, 2012?
PALMER LUCKEY: That sounds like it’s probably correct. I’m not sure if that’s the exact date.
LAWYER: [presenting a cardboard box] And you packaged your headset into a United States Postal Service medium-sized box, flat rate Priority, correct?
PALMER LUCKEY: That’s not an accurate representation of the box. USPS actually makes several different medium-sized boxes in different shapes. Some are longer, some are boxier. There are actually several different sizes . . .
LAWYER: During your deposition—under oath—you testified that you put what you sent to Mr. Carmack in a USPS medium priority box.
PALMER LUCKEY: Yes. And what I’m saying is there is more than one USPS medium Priority box. There are actually several different shapes and sizes of box that are all classed under the medium flat rate fee . . . For example, I believe that there is a long and flat wide mailer that is small. There is another that is kind of a cube that is small. So just for the sake of being accurate, I just want to point out that box is not an accurate representation, but it is also a USPS Priority flat rate medium-scale box.
LAWYER: Is the box too tall?
PALMER LUCKEY: It’s actually just much too narrow. The box that I used was one of the more squared ones. The headset wouldn’t have begun to fit into that particular box.
LAWYER: So your box was wider and shorter?
PALMER LUCKEY: Yeah. It was similar in size to the box that—that the prototype is currently housed in.
LAWYER: We can agree that what you sent to Mr. Carmack was, in fact, in a box, right?
PALMER LUCKEY: Yes. I had to put it into a box so that I could send it through the postal service and get it to him, because, well, that’s the best way to move physical goods.
THE FOLLOWING DAY . . .
SECURITY OFFICER: All rise for the jury.
JUDGE KINKEADE: I’m so glad y’all made it back. Y’all be seated. [noticing something in the lawyer’s hands] You have a new box . . . that’s a different box.
LAWYER: In fact I do, Your Honor.
JUDGE KINKEADE: Oh, wow. Okay. Go ahead.
LAWYER: Let’s start right there. Good morning, Mr. Luckey.
PALMER LUCKEY: Good morning.
LAWYER: Is this the right box?
PALMER LUCKEY: Yes. That’s the same type of box that I used to ship my Rift prototype to Mr. Carmack.
LAWYER: Very good. So everything that you shipped to Mr. Carmack fit in this box, correct?
PALMER LUCKEY: That’s correct.
LAWYER: Outstanding. Glad we could get that cleared up.
While moments like those served to lighten the mood, they paled in comparison to the testimony from ZeniMax’s damages expert, Daniel Jackson. In fact, the testimony seemed so absurd at times, that it felt like it had been lifted from a poorly written sitcom . . .
INT. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTHOUSE (NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS)-DAY
MS. WILKINSON, a lawyer for Oculus, questions DANIEL JACKSON, the expert witness hired by ZeniMax to calculate damages if the jury were to rule against Oculus.
MS. WILKINSON
You do this for a full-time living, right? You’re an expert witness, and you work with lawyers on litigation all the time?
DANIEL JACKSON
Well, I do do some other things, but it is a big piece of my work, yes.
MS. WILKINSON
And you charge $595 an hour?
DANIEL JACKSON
Actually, January 1, it went to $695.
[Ooohs and Ahhhs from the studio audience]
MS. WILKINSON
Oh, congratulations.
[Mild laughter]
The amount of money that Jackson had made by simply being in court over the past ten days ($50,000+) was sobering. As was the amount that Jackson’s firm had already billed ZeniMax in the lead up to this trial ($650,000).
Although it seemed a little comical that so much money would be spent to assess potential damages, the true comedy would come from actual assessment itself.
DANIEL JACKSON
There are two main components that are required in order to make a VR experience happen. You have got to have hardware and you have got to have software. So we divide it between hardware and software.
Logically, this made sense—a virtual reality experience requires both hardware and software. Except, as it turned out, Jackson was not just speaking colloquially—he meant that literally: that, when assessing damages, a simple 50/50 split between hardware and software would do the trick. Then using this 50/50 approach, Jackson gave ZeniMax all the credit for the “software”; and—after breaking down “hardware” into four categories: display, optics, ergonomics, sensor—he awarded ZeniMax half the credit for hardware (because Carmack had added a Hillcrest tracker [“the sensor”] and a pair of ski goggles [“ergonomics”])
DANIEL JACKSON
So . . . if 50 percent is hardware and 50 percent of the hardware is related to ZeniMax property, then 25 percent of the total is related to ZeniMax, and then all of the software, 50 percent of the software, which would give us an apportionment of 75 percent of the total value would be associated in some way with ZeniMax.
[Cue the laugh track]
DANIEL JACKSON
So if you take the $2 billion [that Facebook paid for Oculus] and you say, okay, we’re going to do 75 apportionment to ZeniMax, 25 percent to Luckey and other contributors, then you would come to a one-and-half-billion-dollar measure of damages.
MS. WILKINSON
. . . You’re not a technology expert, right?
DANIEL JACKSON
That is correct.
MS. WILKINSON
You don’t know anything about the specific trade secrets. If I asked you to explain chromatic aberration in some kind of real technical detail, could you do it?
DANIEL JACKSON
Absolutely not.
MS. WILKINSON
Okay. So all of your conclusions that you came to in this case are based on talking to Plaintiffs’ other paid experts about technical issues, right?
DANIEL JACKSON
Correct. That’s not my bailiwick.
[Laughter]
MS. WILKINSON
. . . No offense, you’re a CPA, but the math you’re doing here is not fancy, is it? You start with $2 billion, right?
DANIEL JACKSON
Yes.
MS. WILKINSON
And you say the other expert told me that hardware and software are half, they’re both equally important, right?
DANIEL JACKSON
They are equally important.
MS. WILKINSON
So what you did was you went down and said, okay, then I cut that in half and that means 1 billion is for hardware . . .
DANIEL JACKSON
Correct.
MS. WILKINSON
. . . and the other billion is for software?
DANIEL JACKSON
Correct.
MS. WILKINSON
And then you had some other expert tell you that the hardware is divided into four areas, right? Buckets?
DANIEL JACKSON
Yes.
[More laughter]
MS. WILKINSON
. . . all right. So you have no idea whether the sensor that they used, that they built themselves, that Oculus did, has anything to do with the Hillcrest sensor that Mr. Carmack used on the prototype back in June of 2012, do you?
DANIEL JACKSON
No, I do not. In fact, probably it does not, other than Hillcrest having assisted them in designing a sensor that did more what they wanted. So if you take an intellectual property contributed by someone, use it as a basis to design around it, you’re still continuing the use of the intellectual property to get your product.
MS. WILKINSON
That’s what you think, right?
DANIEL JACKSON
My understanding, that’s correct.
MS. WILKINSON
But all that understanding isn’t based on any technical knowledge you have?
DANIEL JACKSON
No.
MS. WILKINSON
And, in fact, when you say ergonomics for $250 million, exactly what is it that ZeniMax did in terms of the strap and making it comfortable that’s worth $250 million?
DANIEL JACKSON
Based on the purchase price, if you allocate the hardware to the four categories, that’s what it mathematically works out to.
MS. WILKINSON
Sir, doesn’t that sound a little crazy to you?
DANIEL JACKSON
I’m sure a lot of people think $2 billion for a company that’s never sold a real product sounds kind of crazy.
[Raucous laughter]
MS. WILKINSON
So you can’t tell us what each individual trade secret is worth, right?
DANIEL JACKSON
I am not telling you that. That’s correct.
MS. WILKINSON
Right. You don’t have the ability to do that, do you?
DANIEL JACKSON
. . . I wouldn’t agree with that . . . I was not asked to do it based upon the description the technical experts gave of what it took to do virtual reality.
MS. WILKINSON
Are you saying that if they had asked you to assess each trade secret and value that you could have done it?
DANIEL JACKSON
No. You said I didn’t have the ability. I do valuation. I do valuation of intellectual property all the time. I have the ability. Now, I haven’t been asked to do it, and I haven’t done it, but I have the ability . . . I made the decision that as a bundle they should have been valued, not independently.
MS. WILKINSON
[But] you have no basis for saying that they are intermingled in all of the same value since you’re not a technical expert, correct?
DANIEL JACKSON
The only basis I have is technical experts, ma’am. Not me.
MS. WILKINSON
That’s all the questions I have, Your Honor.
[Laughter and applause]
Jackson also provided some additional methods to quantify the damages. But these methods were as, uh, sophisticated as his original $250-million-for-a-strap calculations. For example, instead of using a two-way split between hardware and software, another option he laid out was to do a three-way split between tracking, rendering, and display. So “If you accept Tracking and Rendering being ZeniMax contributions,” Jackson explained, “Display being zero ZeniMax contribution, you would then get a two-thirds apportionment of the 2 billion, which would say 67 percent. Or $1.33 billion.” Another method—an alternative to the aforementioned lump sum options—would be to assess a “reasonable ongoing royalty.”
And what, exactly, might be a reasonable rate? “Twenty percent for at least 10 years,” Jackson proposed. And why 20 percent? That was based on a “hypothetical negotiation” that Jackson imagined could have conceivably played out between Oculus and ZeniMax in 2012. “[This] never happened, never will,” he explained, “but we’ve got to assume this did.” Okay. And if we assume a 20 percent royalty had been negotiated, what about the time frame? Where did “at least 10 years” come from? For that there was no answer.
THE FANTASY VS. THE DOCUMENTARY
“One of these pictures is cattywampus,” Federal District Judge Ed Kinkeade exclaimed on the morning of January 10, pointing to a photo that ZeniMax was trying to get just moments before the jurors would be sworn in.
The photo in question—a grainy, previously undisclosed security cam image—depicted John Carmack exiting id Software during a summer night in 2013. And though there appeared to be nothing unusual or spectacular about this grainy image, ZeniMax saw things differently: they believed that the image showed a bulge in Carmack’s pocket, and that this bulge could contain some sort of trade secrets.
As Judge Kinkeade and ZeniMax’s Sammi haggled over whether to admit the cattywampus photo, Luckey couldn’t help but think that this image was a metaphor for ZeniMax’s case. Their entire case, in his opinion, was essentially a conspiracy theory. At every turn, since they first brought this case three years ago, ZeniMax consistently took the most ordinary things, stripped them of context and reason, and then inserted outrageous alternative explanations that seemed like they had been cribbed from a spy novel. That’s how this photo of Carmack exiting a building became evidence of a scheme to steal “trade secrets.” Or how a Fourth of July demo for Iribe, Mitchell, and Antonov—a demo that Luckey had talked about in interviews for years—turned into a “secret meeting” of plotting thieves. In this respect, it felt almost fitting that the trial was happening just minutes away from Dealey Plaza where, long ago, President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.
In a way, Luckey almost admired ZeniMax’s creativity. But as much as Luckey loved a good conspiracy theory, he was looking forward to this one being debunked.
“I like to use a moviemaker analogy,” explained Beth Wilkinson—Oculus’ lead attorney—moments into her opening statement. “There is a fantasy . . . and a documentary. Luckily for you, in this case you are going to see a documentary. Because we have all the evidence. It all exists: what these people were thinking, what these people were doing. It’s on tape, it’s on YouTube, it’s in emails.”
As an example, Wilkinson pointed to something her opposing counsel had presented in his opening argument. “To make this story sell—this fantasy that we actually stole their underlying testbed (not their VR engine as they call it)—counsel showed you only a portion of some texts . . . these are the actual messages. And they only showed you these first six lines. Okay? And they made it sound like if we can get an endorsement, we will leave the testbed . . . [but a few lines later] Mr. Iribe says, ‘Just tell them we need to get approval from Carmack to leave the software, so we’d rather come back and just do the demo when Gabe is here.’ They got all these messages. They wanted you to think that he actually was willing and did leave it . . . That’s why you need to see all the evidence. That’s why you need to see the documentary and not listen to the fantasy that Plaintiffs are trying to sell you.”
Situations like that text message example popped up several times throughout the trial. The most amusing of which occurred during the cross-examination of Robert Altman—in response to his comments about ZeniMax’s history with VR. “We had actually looked at VR technology for a long time,” Altman had stated. “Going back into the ’90s. In fact, there was a photograph of the fellow who is our vice president of game development on the cover of PC Gamer Magazine wearing one of those rigs back in the ’90s.”
Well, as it turned out, that vice president of game development—Todd Vaughn—had been a deputy editor at PC Gamer. And yet, even with this new information brought to light, Robert Altman stood firm—saying, “I stand by my testimony.”
As Luckey looked on, listening to the testimony of this man who claimed that Oculus’ origin story was but a “myth”; and that he had “no training, no expertise, no ability to create VR”; he realized that Robert Altman was right about one thing: the magic that made Oculus—the “secret sauce” as Altman called—did begin before that 2012 E3. But to capture the full story, Altman needed to go back in time even further than Doom 3: BFG and the infamous Rage testbed.
The right place to begin was 2009—back to a time when Luckey really did lack any VR expertise. To describe how he got from utter ignorance to the prototype he shipped Carmack, it all sounds so simple; as if the breakthroughs that made the Rift special were merely yes-or-no options. Should this headset have a wide field of view? Yes. Well okay, then! Should the headset be lightweight? Yes, yes, yes. And what about cost? Should it be high-cost or low-cost? Well, people do tend to prefer cheaper things . . . so let’s go with that option!
These reflections about the early days paired nicely with something Zuckerberg said during the trial that really resonated with Luckey: “This team . . .” Zuckerberg said at one point during the trial, “they really care about virtual reality. This is going to be, like, their life’s work. When you look back 10, 20 years from now, I think that’s going to be the thing that they are most proud of in their lives is they built this experience and contributed to this.”
To Luckey, he believed these words with every fiber of his being. And he couldn’t wait for this trial to end and finally get back to work.