When the pair split professionally, Halliday presented Morrow with a contract forcing him to turn over his stake in the company they built together. Halliday never got over the way he left things with his friend. ... As the egg flickers in his hands, Parzival's real-world friends can see its glow even outside of the OASIS.

Why did Halliday and Morrow stop being friends?

Halliday was outwardly in love with Kira, but so were many others. He could never find the courage to ask her out. When Og married her, Halliday's dreams were crushed. Subsequently, given that James was thus smitten with Ogden Morrow's (late) wife, he chose to break contact with Og for the rest of his life.

Why did Ogden Morrow leave GSS?

At the time, he claimed it was for "personal reasons." But years later, Morrow wrote in his autobiography that he'd left GSS because "we were no longer in the videogame business," and because he felt that the OASIS had evolved into something horrible. "It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity," he wrote.