Richard Garriott is suing NCsoft
May 6th, 2009 by Colin Temple
Richard Garriott, the man behind the Ultima series, and more rectently Tabula Rasa, is suing NCSoft, the company that published Tabula Rasa.
Garriott served as CEO of NCSoft Austin until November of last year. Shortly after returning from his paid visit to space, as a tourist, he apparently resigned from his position at the company. An open letter to the NCSoft customers and to the MMO community from Garriott was published on the Tabula Rasa forums.
According to the letter, Garriott was leaving the company voluntarily to pursue other interests. Apparently, visiting space had made him rethink his priorities.
But that’s not really what happaned, at least not according to Garriott’s $24 million lawsuit. According to Garriott, he was informed immediately upon his return to Earth that his time at NCSoft was done.
The post, the lawsuit says, was not written by Garriott. NCSoft put it up there to make things look good for the company. At the time, Garriott did not see a reason to object. Now, he wishes he had.
As a part of Garriott’s contract, he had stock options until 2011. The terms of his contract stated that his options would remain available to him until 2011, even if his position at the company was terminated. However, if he were to voluntarily walk away from NCSoft, his options would expire after 90 days.
And there lies the problem: Richard Garriott insists that his termination was involuntary, but because NCSoft put up the front of Garriott leaving for personal reasons, they have recorded his departure as a voluntary one. Garriott attempted to have this status changed multiple times, but NCSoft refused to comply, forcing Garriott to sell off his options at a bad time. After all, in a recession the options were worth considerably less than they would have been in better financial times.
The lawsuit seeks $24 million in damages from NCSoft, claiming breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation. You can see the official details of the lawsuit here.
If the things said in the lawsuit are true, he has a good point. We’ll have to wait and see what NCSoft says about it.
