id Software's John Carmack has today joined Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift, as the firm's chief technical officer. He will continue working at id.
A spokesperson for Bethesda told Gamasutra "John has long been interested in the work at Oculus VR and wishes to spend time on that project. The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected."
In a separate statement to Eurogamer Bethesda said "John will spend time working out of Oculus as part of his role with them, but he will also continue to work at id."
Id also noted that Carmack would remain at the studio on Twitter:
Happy to say @id_aa_carmack is not leaving id & will continue to provide leadership for our games in development.
— id Software (@idSoftware) August 7, 2013
On the Oculus' Kickstarter blog Carmack wrote "I have fond memeories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming – the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on.
"Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer's early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today in a pioneer.
"The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It's certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don't even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work with them. It's going to be awesome!"
Carmack has been a key player in the development of the Oculus Rift and was the first developer to integrate the technology into a game.
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