Facebook's acquisition of Oculus, the maker of the Oculus Rift VR headset surprised almost everyone, including the gaming company's chief technology officer John Cormack.
The gaming legend has broken his silence on the $2 billion buyout in response to a blog post by Peter Berkman. Carmack said he "wasn't expecting Facebook" and admitted there are companies "with more obvious synergies" than the social network.
However, he added that he has 'reasons' to believe Facebook will do right by the company's vision to make virtual reality gaming an actual reality.
In the blog's comments section, he wrote: "I do have reasons to believe that they get the Big Picture as I see it, and will be a powerful force towards making it happen. You don't make a commitment like they just did on a whim."
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Carmack did say he met with Zuckerberg a week prior to the buyout being announced, but had no inkling the Facebook CEO was interested in buying Oculus.
"I wasn't personally involved in any of the negotiations - I spent an afternoon talking technology with Mark Zuckerberg, and the next week I find out that he bought Oculus."
He also said he was unconcerned about the privacy implication involved with Facebook's advertising and data-centric business model.
"I did skip the data mining issue, mostly because I just can't get very worked up about it," he added.
"I'm not a "privacy is gone, get over it" sort of person, and I fully support people that want remain unobserved, but that means disengaging from many opportunities. The idea that companies are supposed to interact with you and not pay attention has never seemed sane to me."
