Richard Garriott To Sue Former Employer NCSoft 107
Om writes "Richard Garriott, lead designer of the now-defunct NCSoft game Tabula Rasa, is suing former employer NCSoft to the tune of $24,000,000. GamePolitics has details on the legal filings, but contrary to official postings from 'General British' himself, it appears this split wasn't exactly amicable."
The Letter Was Written by NCsoft (Score:5, Informative)
... but contrary to official postings from 'General British' himself ...
If you bother to read the official document [libsyn.com] hosted by GamePolitics, Garriott claims that letter was fabricated while he was in quarantine from his space flight. And he claims its true intent was to deprive him of stock options he would have if he were terminated involuntarily. Since it sounded as voluntary termination in the letter, he no longer had these stock options:
22. Shortly after the "quarantine call," NCsoft prepared and presented an "open letter" to Mr. Garriott, announcing Mr Garriott's departure from the company. That letter was drafted by NCsoft but purported to be from Mr. Garriott to the Tabula Rasa players. The letter announced that Mr. Garriott was "leaving NCsoft to purse [new] interests." Though NCsoft's letter omitted details about the circumstances surrounding Mr. Garriott's departure, Mr. Garriott saw no reason at the time to object to these omissions, and he did not object to NCsoft posting the letter on the Tabula Rasa website.
23. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it appears that NCsoft's "open letter" was a prelude to the wrongful conduct by NCsoft to come.
E. NCsoft Re-Characterized Mr. Garriott's Termination as a Voluntary Departure, Depriving Mr. Garriott of the Full Value of His Stock Options.
Seems to boil down to whether or not his termination was voluntary or involuntary that determines if he could have exercised $27 million (not $24 million) in stock options.
Lord British (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Letter Was Written by NCsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Seems to boil down to whether or not his termination was voluntary or involuntary that determines if he could have exercised $27 million (not $24 million) in stock options.
Actually, it boiled down to when not if he could exercise his stock options. If his leaving was "voluntary" he would have to sell his stock options right away or risk them not being honored by NCSoft. If his leaving was involuntary, he'd have until June 2011 to decide when to exercise his stock. Because of his "voluntary" leaving, he had to exercise his stocks in a down market rather than being able to pick the right time to cash in.
Re:Lord British (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)
The options are just an agreement to sell a number of shares at a set price. If NCSoft was worth $10/share when the options were cut, and is worth $20/share now, then Richard Garriott could buy the stock directly from the company for $10/share, then turn around and sell it for $20/share on the open market. If the stock is currently only worth $5/ a share, then he would still buy at $10/share, but wouldn't be able to gain any profit at all from a sale.
NCSoft isn't paying him anything at all, they're just cutting him an employee discount on their stock if it is currently trading higher than when he started working for them.
Options of this kind don't last forever though and usually have an expire date and a bunch of strings attached.
Re:The Letter Was Written by NCsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Letter Was Written by NCsoft (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps, however, they did play:
Ultima III;
Ultima IV;
Ultima VI;
Ultima VII (parts one and two); and
Ultima VIII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_British#Assassination_of_Lord_British [wikipedia.org]
Re:Who the fuck? (Score:5, Informative)
Richard Garriott is one of the better-known fucking game developers, his first games came out at the end of the fucking 70's. He created the entire fucking Ultima series, including Ultima Online, which was one of the first fucking MMOs. He gained the fucking nickname "Lord British" in school because his friends thought he sounded like he had a fucking British accent (he's American though, and lives in fucking Texas), and in his Ultima series the fucking ruler of the land was a character called Lord British whom he fucking modelled after himself (visually, anyway), and he used the fucking name to credit himself ("a fucking Lord British game"). The game he developed with NCSoft, who he's now fucking suing, was called Tabula Rasa and his fucking in-game persona was instead called "General British". He alleges that NCSoft fucking fired him and did so in a way that they claimed he fucking voluntarily left, thereby forcing him to sell his fucking stock options for a lower price than he would have gotten had he been allowed to retain them according to his fucking employment contract, which said that if he was fucking fired (as opposed to leaving voluntarily), he was allowed to keep his fucking options until 2011.
So that's what the fuck is going on.