Virtual reality pioneer Palmer Luckey has left Facebook, six months after it was revealed that he had secretly funded a pro-Trump campaign group dedicated to turning the tide of the US election through “meme magic” and “shitposting”.

Luckey, who founded virtual reality company Oculus in 2012 when he was 19, has been a Facebook employee since Mark Zuckerberg’s social network bought his firm in 2014 for $2bn. In a statement, Facebook said “Palmer will be dearly missed. Palmer’s legacy extends far beyond Oculus. His inventive spirit helped kickstart the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry. We’re thankful for everything he did for Oculus and VR, and we wish him all the best.”

But the revelation in September 2016 that Luckey had donated $10,000 to “Nimble America” damaged his reputation at Facebook. The group, a pro-Trump PAC associated with the Donald Trump subform on Reddit, had once run a billboard campaign accusing Hillary Clinton of being “Too Big To Jail”.

When Luckey’s involvement with the group was revealed, so too were a number of posts on Reddit written by “NimbleRichMan”, an account that Luckey told the Daily Beast was his. “You and I are the same,” NimbleRichMan wrote. “We know Hillary Clinton is corrupt, a warmonger, a freedom-stripper. Not the good kind you see dancing in bikinis on Independence Day, the bad kind that strips freedom from citizens and grants it to donors.

“For the next 48 hours, I will match your donations dollar for dollar,” the post, which has since been deleted, continued. “Donate $10 and I will match you by flying my jet a minute less. Donate a hundred and I will match you by skipping a glass of scotch. Donate a thousand and I will match by putting off the tyre change on my car … Let’s generate some success of our own. Make America great again with your meme magic, centipedes of The Donald!”

In the wake of the revelation, Luckey’s role at Facebook was quietly reduced. He has appeared at few public events in the last six months, and a December shake-up in Oculus management that saw his co-founder, Brendan Iribe, demoted from chief executive also left Luckey with a “new, undisclosed role”. The reduction in public responsibilities didn’t stop developers pulling projects, however: a number of indie programmers announced plans for their games to exclusively support rival platforms.

Luckey is not the only high-profile Trump supporter at Facebook. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who sat on Trump’s transition team and was a delegate for the candidate at the Republican National Congress, sits on Facebook’s board. At a talk to a historically black college in North Carolina, Mark Zuckerberg cited the presence of Thiel on the company’s all-white board as an example of the sort of diversity Facebook needs to succeed.

“I personally believe that if you want to have a company that is committed to diversity, you need to be committed to all kinds of diversity, including ideological diversity,” Zuckerberg told students of the college.