Meta VR consultant John Carmack leaves the company and criticizes the inefficiency of the VR and Metaverse projects

John Carmack, founder of the renowned ID Software and executive consultant on VR for Meta, has announced that he is leaving Meta. Among the reasons for his departure, Carmack points out that there are inefficiencies and self-sabotage at Meta that have affected the work the company is doing regarding its VR (virtual reality) and Metaverse efforts.

John Carmack quits Meta

Meta (formerly Facebook), the social networking and metaverse company, has lost one of its top VR consultants. John Carmack, one of the founders of ID Software, creators of the Doom game franchise, has announced his departure from Meta. In a Facebook post John Carmack explains that his resignation as a VR consultant for the company marks the end of a decade dedicated to VR, and reveals that the company is plagued by inefficiencies regarding the work done for VR and metaverse development.

John Carmack explains:

We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we are constantly self-sabotaging and wasting our efforts. There’s no way to sugarcoat this; I think our organization is operating at half the efficiency that would make me happy.

John Carmack was part of Oculus as the company’s CTO when Facebook bought it in 2014, and took a consulting role at Facebook in 2019 to focus on artificial intelligence projects.

Mea Culpa and more

However, John Carmack includes himself in the problem, acknowledging that he could have done more. In his account of what led to his decision to leave, John Carmack explains:

I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it seems like I should be able to get things done, but I’m obviously not persuasive enough. A lot of the things I complain about end up working to my advantage after a year or two and an accumulation of evidence.

However, not everything is bad for Carmack. He praises the Quest 2, a headset produced by the company that he says is used by millions of people who benefit from it. The headset can be considered the current entry-level metaverse and VR headset offered by Meta, with a cost of $400, while the Meta Quest Pro, which has better technical specifications, costs $1,500.

Meta’s metaverse pivot saw the company invest in research and development of VR software and hardware, resulting in losses calculated in the billions and leading the company to lay off tens of thousands of its employees.