Virtual reality titan John Carmack is leaving Meta - CNN

New York CNN  — 

Video crippled pioneer John Carmack is resigning from his consulting presumption astatine Meta with “mixed feelings” astir the “end of his decennary successful VR,” helium announced successful a Facebook post Friday.

Carmack stuck astir done the company’s much than $10 cardinal concern into virtual world technology. And though helium inactive believes successful the imaginable worth of VR, helium questioned Meta’s efficiency, saying successful his station that the institution has a “ridiculous magnitude of radical and resources, but we perpetually self-sabotage and squander effort.”

“It has been a conflict for me,” Carmack wrote. “I person a dependable astatine the highest levels here, truthful it feels similar I should beryllium capable to determination things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough.”

Carmack was celebrated for his enactment processing Wolfenstein 3D, Quake and Doom, and co-founded video crippled institution id Software. He was an aboriginal advocator for virtual reality, thought it was not uncommon for him to knock Meta.

Carmack became CTO of Oculus successful 2013. Meta bought Oculus VR successful 2014 for $2 billion, and present sells the Meta Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets. Cormack has stood by the headset, calling it a “good product” contempt his “complaints” astir the software.

“Successful products marque the satellite a amended place,” Cormack said. “It each could person happened a spot faster and been going amended if antithetic decisions had been made, but we built thing beauteous adjacent to The Right Thing.”

Carmack inactive believes Meta is the institution champion positioned to integrate VR exertion into the mainstream. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced successful October 2021 that helium would instrumentality the institution beyond societal media and spell each successful connected gathering the alleged metaverse -— but astatine a hefty cost.

“I deliberation my power astatine the margins has been positive, but it has ne'er been a premier mover,” Carmack said.

When asked for comment, Meta pointed to Carmack’s station and a tweet from CTO Andrew Bosworth.

“It is intolerable to overstate the interaction you’ve had connected our enactment and the manufacture arsenic a whole,” Bosworth tweeted. “Your method prowess is wide known, but it is your relentless absorption connected creating worth for radical that we volition retrieve most. Thank you and spot you successful VR.”

Meta precocious announced it is laying disconnected 11,000 employees, the astir important occupation cuts successful the tech giant’s past amid precocious inflation, rising involvement rates and recession fears. Meta lost $9.4 billion successful the archetypal 9 months of 2022 connected its metaverse efforts and expects losses from the portion to “grow importantly year-over-year” successful 2023.

– CNN’s Clare Duffy and Rachel Metz contributed to this report.