{"id":793293,"date":"2026-07-10T18:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T18:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/793293\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T18:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T18:08:09","slug":"former-oculus-cto-john-carmack-puts-up-1m-for-official-vr-ports-of-id-software-titles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/793293\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Oculus CTO John Carmack Puts up $1M for Official VR Ports of Id Software Titles"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Carmack, former Oculus CTO and co-founder of id Software, announced he\u2019s still willing to put up $1 million of his personal money to help make VR versions of Id\u2019s most famous retro titles\u2014especially now that Microsoft has laid off a bulk of the studio\u2019s employees<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Having left id Software in 2013 to join Oculus as CTO and help kickstart the VR consumer revolution, Carmack is still one of the industry\u2019s most vocal advocates. Even after stepping down as CTO in 2019 and leaving Meta in 2022<\/a>, he\u2019s continued to push for open platforms and wider adoption of XR.<\/p>\n

Last February, Carmack announced he would lend support to VR modding group Team Beef<\/a>, noting he was lobbying for the team to have the ability to sell \u201cfull versions of the classic titles officially on the store.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had some hope, but that was still too small potatoes to make anything happen in a Microsoft company,\u201d Carmack said at the time. Notably, Team Beef<\/a> has released a number of unofficial VR mods, including much of Id Software\u2019s back catalogue, as well as official VR ports WRATH: Aeon of Ruin VR (2025) and soon-to-release Postal 2 VR (2026).<\/p>\n

Now that Microsoft has essentially pared down Id Software though, resulting in what laid-off VFX artist Derek Best calls the size of \u201csupport studio\u201d, Carmack is again reiterating the offer<\/a>, hoping to make officially-sanctioned Id Software VR games a possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cBTW, if the XBOX division is scrounging for loose change under the sofa cushions, I\u2019m still willing to put up a $1M guarantee to allow TeamBeefVR to commercialize the legacy open source games on VR,\u201d Carmack says.<\/p>\n

By \u201clegacy open source games,\u201d Carmack is referring to classic Id Software titles whose game engines were released under open source licenses, such as the original DOOM (1993), Quake (1996), and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001). While the underlying code is freely available, the games\u2019 assets, including levels, textures, audio, and other copyrighted content, are still owned wholly by Microsoft.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Acquired by Microsoft in 2009, Id Software has been relatively insulated from Microsoft\u2019s repeated gaming layoffs, which included Activision Blizzard in 2024, and the closure of several ZeniMax-owned studios like Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, making recent cuts at the legendary developer unfortunate, but not all together surprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy \u2018Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand\u2019 statement isn\u2019t aging well, and this is certainly going to dampen the mood of the founder reunion at QuakeCon next month,\u201d Carmack says. \u201cI\u2019m saddened, but I can\u2019t muster anger or outrage over it. I don\u2019t have access to the books, but I suspect that Id Software was a marginal business from Microsoft\u2019s perspective. I believe the reports that Minecraft revenues have been carrying several other studios. To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether Microsoft will actually bite remains to be seen. VR games already make less relative to flatscreen games, which makes it less attractive from a revenue perspective. Still, the company could do a lot more right now to sow good will, as its competitor Sony is taking the brunt of gamer frustration right now with its recent decision to end physical disc production before 2028<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Carmack, former Oculus CTO and co-founder of id Software, announced he\u2019s still willing to put up $1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[49,48,61,260,261,262],"class_list":["post-793293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-virtual-reality","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology","tag-virtual-reality","tag-virtualreality","tag-vr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}