14 DAY TRIAL // Richard Garriott is one of the best known game designers in the world. He is the one who created the Ultima series and provided one of the main characters of Ultima Online, under the name of Lord British.
His latest videogame adventure, the futuristic MMO Tabula Rasa, was not as successful, being shut down by NCsoft earlier in 2009 because of low subscriber numbers.
Before that, Garriott had gone up to the International Space Station, taking with him the samples of DNA from the player's of the MMO, hoping to create enough publicity to make the game successful again. Now, the same man is suing NCsoft, saying that he is entitled to 27 million dollars (maybe to recoup the costs associated with taking his trip into space?).
The suit brought forward by Garriott was filed in the United States District Court in Texas and claims that NCsoft has not respected an agreement made back in 2001 when the developer agreed to work for the Korean company. Basically, the leader of the publisher, Chris Chung, chose to file Garriott's departure as being a “voluntary” one, even if the game creator was initially interested in continuing his work at Ncsoft.
The reason was that, if the termination of the contract was made by NCsoft, Garriott’s stock options would be in effect until June 2011, while if the termination was voluntary, they had to be exercised in the time frame of 90 days. So, Garriott was forced to sell his options at low prices. He seeks to recoup the money he could have made by asking 27 million dollars from his former company.
Apparently, the letter that Garriott posted in which he told players about his desire to leave to pursue other projects was another item that NCsoft used in order to make his departure “voluntary.”