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The Real Reason Palmer Luckey Was Fired From Facebook (zdnet.com) 142

Posted by BeauHD from the connect-the-dots dept.
ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols argues that the founder of Oculus, Palmer Luckey, wasn't fired because of his political views, as a recently-published Wall Street Journal article suggests, but because the virtual-reality company lost a $500 million intellectual property theft case to game maker ZeniMax. An anonymous reader shares the report: According to The Wall Street Journal, Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, a virtual reality company, was fired by Facebook because "he donated $10,000 to an anti-Hillary Clinton group" during the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign. But the article fails to mention a simple little fact: On Feb. 1, 2017, Oculus lost an intellectual property (IP) theft case against game maker ZeniMax, to the tune of $500 million. So, if one of your employees just cost your company a cool half-billion bucks for doing wrong what would you do? Well, Facebook isn't saying, even now, but on March 30, 2017, it let Luckey go.

Yes, Luckey also lied about his political moves, which went well beyond donating to an anti-Hillary billboard campaign. But let's look at the record. Everyone knew he'd lied by Feb. 22, 2016. Was he fired then? No. Was he fired after being found guilty of stealing ZeniMax's trade secrets? Yes. Officially, Facebook stated: "All details associated with specific personnel matters are kept strictly confidential. This is our policy for all employees, no matter their seniority. But we can say unequivocally that Palmer's departure was not due to his political views." Let me spell it out for you: He made some political waves. Nothing happened. He cost Facebook $500 million. He was fired. Can anyone here seriously not draw the lines between the dots?
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The Real Reason Palmer Luckey Was Fired From Facebook More

The Real Reason Palmer Luckey Was Fired From Facebook

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  • TRASH Article (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bongey ( 974911 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:14PM (#57634086)

    John Carmack still works for Facebook, who was a party in the ZeniMax case. Palmer Luckey wasn't even a party in the case. Utter bullshit story trying to deflect.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You're apparently a moron. Palmer was the CEO of the company when it infringed, FB then bought that company and inherited that fight. Yes, he was a party.

    • Re:TRASH Article (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:28PM (#57634162)

      Also, as any freshman business major can tell you, sunk costs should be ignored. You don't fire people because they lost money in the past, you fire them because you think they are going to lose money in the future.

      My experience is that the most common reason people are fired is incompetence. The 2nd most common is being on the losing end of internal office politics. As you move up the hierarchy from janitor to CEO the first reason diminishes and the 2nd increases.

      • Re:TRASH Article (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:46PM (#57634254) Journal

        My experience is that the most common reason people are fired is incompetence.

        Costing the company half a billion dollars might be seen as incompetence in some circles.

        • Its hard to say if $500M is a lot of money or not to the likes of FB. Their net worth fluxuates a lot more than that on a daily basis. It sure sounds like a lot of money to me, but ive never had anything even close to a million dollars. My gut says it wasnt about the money. Perhaps the lawsuit, but not the $500M itself.

          Here is a guy that caused a rift because he was an outlier for his political position. Then the lawsuit concluded and was found guilty of infringing. My first question as a FB exec is,

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You don't fire people because they lost money in the past, you fire them because you think they are going to lose money in the future.

        "Oculus is liable for $300 million in the verdict ($50 million for trademark infringement, $50 million for copyright infringement, and $200 million for breaking the NDA), while Luckey owes $50 million and former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe owes $150 million (both for false designation). Oculus CTO John Carmack, who previously worked for ZeniMax and was accused of stealing code a

      • Re:TRASH Article (Score:5, Insightful)

        by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @03:13AM (#57635738) Journal

        Also, as any freshman business major can tell you, sunk costs should be ignored. You don't fire people because they lost money in the past, you fire them because you think they are going to lose money in the future.

        As anyone who's older than freshmen will tell you that never happens in practice. Businesses do not operate in some sort of platonic drive for profit free from emotion. They're made of people and people get really pissed off if you loose a cool half billion.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      NO!! ORANGE MAN BAD!!!!!

      • This is not "Score:2, Insightful." This is "Score:-1, Troll."

    • John Carmack still works for Facebook, who was a party in the ZeniMax case.

      This argument also doesn't work, because Carmack has very obvious ongoing value while Luckey had already made his major contribution.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @09:04PM (#57634656)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:TRASH Article (Score:5, Informative)

      by Wescotte ( 732385 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @10:00PM (#57634894)

      According to the court case decision [wikipedia.org] Carmack wasn't head liable for any wrongdoing.

      The jury trial completed on February 2, 2017, with the jury finding that Luckey had violated the NDA he had with ZeniMax, and awarding $500 million to ZeniMax.[15][16] However, the jury found that Oculus, Facebook, Luckey, Iribe, and Carmack did not misappropriate or steal trade secrets,[15][16][17] though ZeniMax continued to publicly assert otherwise

      • Court verdicts aren't final until all the appeals are exhausted, people should remember that. Facebook would be foolish to pay ZeniMax the $500million without exhausting their appeals.

        Typically a large verdict like this is virtually wiped out in appeal. The $2Billion Apple/Samsung verdict ended up around $100 million.

    • Yeah and contrary to Palmer Luckey, Carmack didn't cost Facebook $500 million in patent infringment costs.

  • "Let me spell it out for you" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iMadeGhostzilla ( 1851560 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:16PM (#57634090)

    The author of the article seems very intent on the readers taking his speculation as truth. I wonder why he cares so much.

  • Palmer Luckey is a proven thief. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BigBlockMopar ( 191202 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:16PM (#57634092) Homepage

    On Feb. 1, 2017, Oculus lost an intellectual property (IP) theft case against game maker ZeniMax, to the tune of $500 million.

    So a civil court (not a criminal court) found him guilty of theft.

    How can your boss, your company (the group of people you work with), or your Company (Facebook Inc) ever trust you not to steal from them?

    He's lucky not to be leaving in handcuffs.

    • The civil court found him liable for hiring John Carmack, who in turn brought IP with him. Which is probably true, as ZeniMax paid a bundle to buy id software a few years prior and as John Carmack's inventions no doubt were hugely valuable.

  • Doubtful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:18PM (#57634108) Homepage Journal
    Execs lose billions of dollars and there are no repercussions. For example: Microsoft bought github for $7.5 billion. Eventually that will be marked down as a "writedown" for $7 billion, because Github isn't worth nearly what Microsoft paid for it. Essentially the executives wasted $7.5 billion. So, losing a $500 million court case is nothing. GE just did a writedown of $23 billion. There are no ramifications for the executives, but the stockholders get the shaft.

    • Re:Doubtful (Score:5, Informative)

      by fatwilbur ( 1098563 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @11:25PM (#57635210)
      While I agree with your point, your first example of MS and github is wrong. You provided a textbook example of what is defined as goodwill [investopedia.com] in accounting. It's not an seldom used concept either; nearly every time you buy an entire company, unless it's performing very poorly, it's universally expected you're going to have to pay more than it is actually worth (based on sum of assets, income, etc.). While this may look like a "write down" in the sense it is a non-cash loss, the goodwill remains as an asset on the balance sheet. This is very different than "wasting" money (at least from an accounting sense) or a write-down where you're acknowledging the company has less valuable assets.
      • Goodwill is also wasting money. If you have a lot of goodwill on your books you are shafting your investors. And no, normally companies don't buy companies at more than they are worth. That is dumb. This is a new phenomenon caused by too much cheap capital. And you can see why this is dumb: look at GE. They are likely to go bankrupt due to their buying habits.

  • Anyone paying a modicum of attention to the case figured that out long ago. That said, on appeal the judgement against Luckey/Iribe was eliminated, [roadtovr.com] leaving a $250M judgement against Oculus.

  • But the facts are no good for Luckey's ability to make himself out to be a victim. Yet another poor little rich kid. Wah.

  • I hope he was fired over his political views and then proceeds to sue the crap out of FB because of it.

    • Wouldn't he have already sued by now? The shitstain was fired more than a ywar and a half ago.

  • The WSJ was trying to make people falsely think that anti-Clinton comes with consequences. I can assure you that if any company fired me because of my personal views, may it be religion or political, I WILL take them to court and they will truly understand what kind of consequences comes with discrimination.

    • Religion, you have a case. Political? Not so much. Republicans are not a protected group.

      • IANAL but many states include political beliefs in their anti-discrimination laws, and I think CA is one.

      • Republicans are not a protected group.

        Oh the irony of a group who has a core political tenant of protecting a corporation's ability to fire people for no reason and lambasts 'snow flakes' for seeking protected-group status complaining that they deserve to be protected.

        You know, not something like your gender, sexual orientation or race... something you're born with. No Republicans believe the only protected class for firing should be your political belief that being trans or a woman shouldn't offer you any protection.

    • What's it like, being a delusional twat?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bongey ( 974911 )

      Luckey did take them to court and facebook payed out another 100 million.

  • So now Zenimax posts articles on Slashdot (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Zenimax is run by an actual banking/investment crook. As bad as EA and Actision are, they look like saints compared to Zenimax.

    Now as I type, Zenimax has warehouses of paid trolls- PR reputation services in media speak- boost their godawful loot box riddled POS Fallout 76. Zenimax is literally spending millions on Youtube influencers to sell the game every Elder Scrolls and Fallout fan never asked for. It is no surprise that the PR firm suggested to Zenimax that they could 'widen' their pro-Zenimax efforts

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