[georgemcbay]

I don't know anything specific about the details of any of Carmack's contracts; but certainly when signing them you have a lot more leverage to carve out exclusions when some other company actively wants to buy "you" and your company than you do later when it is clear to everyone that you're on the way out the door.

Armadillo was started way before ZeniMax acquired id (thus easy to foresee needing a documented exclusion), whereas Oculus VR wasn't even a thing until a few years after that was a done deal.

[filmgirlcw]

Right, the way I would read the Armadillo thing isn't as "Carmack knew he needed a documented exclusion clause to work on other stuff," but as "ZeniMax acquired id NOT Armadillo and that made a document setting the exclusion necessary.

Obviously, without seeing Carmack's contract, it's impossible to ascertain if he did agree that all work, in our out of the office, including ideas, belonged to ZeniMax.

And even then, the definition of work product could be argued in all kinds of ways. Is it only committed code, does it also include research and sketches. How does it extend to what is shared with others, etc.

Carmack has a good lawyer, I'm sure. Hopefully that lawyer also looked over his ZeniMax contract.

[famousactress]

It goes without saying that you have more leverage before signing a contract than afterward, and the contract is obviously open ended... I was just pointing out that it's a risk of the unknown that would be weighed against compensation by both parties so it's not totally clear to me that Zeni is out of line yet.

[georgemcbay]

I would assume Carmack did the usual programmer thing and just expected them to not be huge unreasonable assholes about future situations after his ZeniMax employment had ended.

This is a common mistake programmers make when dealing with lawyers and other corporate types who stand to gain money from being huge unreasonable assholes.