Oculus VR, the virtual-reality headset maker Facebook bought for $2 billion in March, is strongly denying claims that its most famous employee stole intellectual property from his former employer. The accusations surfaced last week from video-game company ZeniMax, and the employee in question is John Carmack -- the creator of influential video games including the "Doom" and "Quake" franchises.

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Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey said that employees and their families have gotten death threats since Facebook bought the company. "We expected a negative reaction from people in the short term, we did not expect to be getting so many death threats and harassing phone calls that extended to our families. We know we will prove ourselves with actions and not words, but that kind of shit is unwarranted, especially since it is impacting people who have nothing to do with Oculus."

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Minecraft creator Markus Persson has revealed that an Oculus Rift version of the game was potentially in the works, but following the sudden news that Facebook has acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion, that's no longer the case. "I just cancelled that deal," Persson tweeted. "Facebook creeps me out." He later expanded on his reasoning in a blog post, citing in particular Facebook's constantly changing platform, which has proved a challenge for game developers.

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Facebook has announced plans to purchase Oculus VR, the company behind the Rift headset, for around $2B in cash and stock. This includes $400M, and 23.1 million Facebook shares. An additional $300M earnout will be paid in cash and stock if Oculus hits certain unspecified milestones. “I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement today.

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Oculus VR, makers of the Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles, announced today that Eve: Valkyrie, a space dog-fighting game often used to demo the device, will be the first game Oculus will co-publish, and the first exclusive Oculus Rift launch title.

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The Oculus Rift headset could eventually be free at the point of purchase if the company finds the right business model, CEO Brendan Iribe has told us. The Oculus team were at Develop In Brighton 2013 last week, showing off the Unreal 4 Elemental demo with a new Oculus Rift HD prototype headset. Oculus Rift is currently only available as a $300 devkit; it’s currently unclear how Oculus might eventually end up in the hands of game players, so we asked Iribe what the company had planned for its consumer launch.

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Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe has stated that while his company is purely focusing on Rift for PC and Android at the time being, he’d like to see PS4 and Xbox One compatibility at some point in time.

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Virtual reality headset Oculus Rift has pipped both Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One to win the award for Best Hardware/Peripheral in the E3 2013 Game Critics Award. While Microsoft and Sony were holding large press conferences for their latest consoles, E3 2013 also saw the first public demonstration of a 1080p version of Oculus Rift. The Razr Blade and Nvidia Shield were also nominated in the Best Hardware/Peripheral category.

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Kalypso Media has announced that their upcoming vampire stealth-action game, Dark, will feature support for both 3D via supported televisions, and through conventional Anaglyph (red/blue glasses) 3D. Even more exciting is that Dark will support the upcoming Oculus Rift virtual-reality head-mounted display on Windows PC. For those gamers without a 3D TV or Oculus headset, you can still enjoy Dark in 3D by simply using the classic stereoscopic (red/blue) 3D lenses on a standard monitor.

We just shipped a beta for Half-Life 2 that includes Oculus Rift support. To get it, open the properties for HL2 in Steam, set your command line to "-vr", and opt-in to the SteamPipe beta. This should ship to everybody in a few weeks.

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We've known for some time now that Valve was working on virtual reality support for its perpetually updated free-to-play shooter, Team Fortress 2.  What we didn't know, however, is that said support is also headed to consumers as "VR Mode," and it'll get pushed to PC Team Fortress 2 players "sometime within the next couple of weeks."

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The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset has surpassed its $250,000 goal with 4,581 backers pledging $1,121,315 and it still has 28 days to go. During QuakeCon, long time supporter John Carmack told Polygon that Doom 4 would fully incorporate the tech, as a version of Doom 3: BFG Edition already does.

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