Doom co-creator is leaving Meta

Games industry legend John Carmack announced Friday that he’s leaving Meta.

According to Business Insider, Carmack’s departure came via an internal memo at Meta, heavily criticizing the company’s virtual reality efforts – specifically, workplace efficiency.

“This is the end of my decade in VR. I have mixed feelings,” Carmack explains. “Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long as it is happening. If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has only known inefficiency is ill-prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt-tightening, but really, it is the more personal pain of seeing a [5 percent] GPU utilization number in production. I am offended by it.”

I resigned from Meta, and my internal post got leaked to the press, resulting in some fragmented quotes. Here is the full thing: https://t.co/iUcr8TYMLD

— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) December 17, 2022

Carmack later published the entire memo on Facebook, continuing to express dissatisfaction with his sway within Meta.

“It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough,” Carmack said. “A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it.”

Most people will recognize Carmack as one of id Software’s founders, where he was a programmer on classic games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and many others.

Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.