John Carmack, the tech industry titan known for his work on virtual reality as well as classic games like Doom and Quake, is stepping down as CTO at Meta, according to Business Insider and The New York Times.

Carmack joined Oculus as CTO in 2013, after helping to push the original Oculus Rift prototypes he received from Palmer Luckey, and was involved in Meta when the company (then Facebook) acquired Oculus in 2014. However, in 2019, he reduced his role at the company, stepping down as CTO of Oculus to take on a new role as CTO of Consulting.

At the time, he said he was going to work on artificial intelligence – and in August 2022 it became known that he would not be working at Meta, but at his new startup Keen Technologies.

According to Carmack’s confession, he spent about 20 percent of his time working on Meta.

According to an open message by Carmack about firing Meta employees, he seems unhappy with the way things are going at the company.

In his talk at Meta Connect this October, Carmack revealed that there are many things about virtual reality that he is not comfortable with. He pointed out how difficult it is for users to upgrade headsets quickly, was skeptical of Horizon Worlds’ progress as a social platform, and criticized Meta’s decision to raise the price of the Quest 2 and release the $1,500 Quest Pro.