Microsoft rejected John Carmack's plan to bring Quake 3 VR to Meta Quest

As a programmer and pioneer of the first-person shooter genre, John Carmack needs no introduction. His credits include Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Doom II: Hell on Earth, Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, and more. John Carmack was also instrumental in making VR gaming successful after joining Oculus in 2013 as its CTO, where he continued to drive and shape the Meta Quest platform until 2022.

With the release of a fully playable and unofficial Quake 3 VR mod by Team Beef that uses the game's free demo version as its basis for multiplayer, the quality and impressive way in which it captures the iconic shooter's feel in VR has garnered a lot of attention in the VR and classic gaming community - including John Carmack. If you ever played Quake 3 back in the day, the Quake 3 VR footage above (via @verociity on X) will bring back some fond memories.

After being asked about the port on social media platform X this past weekend and about it being made cannon (as in official), John Carmack confirmed that's precisely what he tried to do while he was at Meta. He even went so far as to promise id Software and Microsoft over one million dollars in sales for Quake 3 VR to be officially available on the Meta Store, but was still rejected.

"I tried - we had a conversation with the powers that be at id Software, and I even offered to personally guarantee a million dollars in sales if they would allow Team Beef to sell full versions of the classic titles officially on the store," John Carmack said. "I had some hope, but that was still too small potatoes to make anything happen in a Microsoft company."

This serves as a friendly reminder that even if you're instrumental in the creation of an IP, once you depart a company or a studio that gets acquired by a mega-corporation like Microsoft, that thing you created is no longer yours. John Carmack is keenly aware of this, and his comments do not reflect any disappointment in being unable to control or steer the Quake franchise. However, it's disappointing to see a programming legend, and one of the key reasons Quake exists in the first place, set aside like this.