Richard Garriott leaving NCSoft late last year came as a bit of a surprise to some, but surely not to others. He certainly didn't sound pissed about it all after coming back from his trip into space, but he's clearly pissed about it now, because he's decided to sue NCSoft for 24 million dollars.
According to GamesIndustry.Biz, the case was filed in Texas and is classified as "Torts – Property – Other Fraud". I was not familiar with the word tort, but apparently it means "a wrongful act or an infringement of a right outside of contractual obligations".
There's not much else to go on right now, but we're sure to find out more information soon enough. I wonder what happened?
[Update -- Gamasutra has come forward with more details. It seems Garriott may not have left NCSoft of his own accord. The suit claims that the president of NCsoft's North American operations, Chris Chung, informed Garriott that NCsoft had decided to "part company" with him and that Garriott objected to this dismissal. Garriott claims that Chung re-characterized Garriott's departure as a voluntary one, which wouldmajorly impact his stock options. The plot thickens...]
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Contest:
8:40 AM on 05.06.2009
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And lol @ them basically firing him. Gold. Did you know Garriott had an art team waste about a month of time designing and re-designing his character's IN-GAME COSTUME? I.e. the one that "General British" would wear, and no one else. Not to mention his space-capades. Oh man, what a cocksucker. And trying to take all the credit for designing UO when it was entirely Raph Koster.
*strikes one off the list*
In general, tort law implies some some kind of damage to yourself or your property. At any rate, from the description I am not sure if there is much of a torts claim here. Sounds like this case is more geared towards "property and other fraud."
At any rate, Tabula Rasa looked like it sucked, I think Garriott should stick to fantasy settings. Although, "Richard Garriott: Ace Plaintiff" might be interesting...
Now, as for Garriott, I don't like or dislike the guy, but he's not stupid. He wouldn't be entering into this suit if he didn't think he was going to get something out of it. There was a lot of strange stuff happening in NCSoft around that time and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he's got a good foundation for a case. The figure is just stupid though; they'll probably settle for a nominal sum.
Maybe he was running out of money, and when he decided to tap into his NCSoft stock, it turned out that since his dismissal was "voluntary" it means that his stock options expire within a time limit. Otherwise, if his dismissal had been "involuntary" he would keep that stock no matter what.
I don't like or dislike the guy. But if a company did that to me, I would be pissed.