By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
NCsoft, South Korea's leading online game company, has been rolling in recent months thanks to the record-breaking popularity of its new release, ``Aion.''
However, the brewing legal dispute with a certain, space-hopping employee may end up cramping the company's style, let alone eroding its wallet.
Richard Garriott, the iconic, multimillion game developer who was the creative mind behind NCsoft's monumental flop, ``Tabula Rasa,'' which was pulled in February, is now suing his former employer for more than $24 million in damages, relating to his departure from the company late last year.
That is a lot more than the 10 billion won (about $8 million) or so the company got from Tabula Rasa during its disappointing 15-month run.
Last November, NCsoft revealed that Garriott was leaving the company. This was confirmed by a posting on Tabula Rasa's Web site under the name of the British game developer, who had just finished a $30-million trip in a Russian spacecraft the previous month.
However, in the lawsuit filed in Austin, Texas, Garriott claims that he was canned by NCsoft, not leaving voluntarily as originally announced, and that the farewell letter on Tabula Rasa's Web site was in fact written by NCsoft.
According to the lawsuit, Garriott was fired while he was still in quarantine from the flight to space. Garriott, who took a leave of absence for the adventure, protested the departure, but eventually agreed to the public statement on his departure.
Garriott alleges that NCsoft mischaracterized his departure as voluntary in order to force him to exercise his tens of millions of stock options during one of the ``worst equity markets in modern history,'' which he says cost him around $27 million in lost value, costs and tax liabilities.
NCsoft inked Garriott in 2001 and granted him stock options lasting through 2011. These stock options were to remain in place in the event of his termination by the company, according to contract clauses, but would expire within 90 days in the case of his voluntary departure.
NCsoft officials in Seoul declined to comment on the allegations.
``We will have our say in court,'' said an NCsoft spokesman.
Officially, NCsoft had been mincing its words on its most famous and expensive employee ever.
However, industry sources say that the company's upper management had grown frustrated with Garriott's work ethic, wondering whether he was spending too much time on his space adventure and other socialite activities rather than dedicating time to his Austin game studio.
And Tabula Rasa quickly proved to be a waste of seven years and 100 billion won obviously didn't help to lighten the mood.
NCsoft officials could now find themselves visiting Texas courts more frequently than they would prefer. In December, it was sued by World.com in the Eastern District of the U.S. state. World.com claims to have invented a ``system and method for enabling users to interact in virtual space'' in 1995 and was granted a patent for the concept in 2007.
However, the U.S. company is frequently accused of being a ``patent troll,'' or an opportunistic company that enforces its patents on those who infringe aggressively despite lacking the intention to manufacture and market the product.
Critics argue that the World.com patent, based on the loose concept of ``highly scalable architecture for a three-dimensional graphical, multi-user, interactive virtual world system,'' could theoretically put every 3D online application under legal threat.
Perhaps, a more meaningful legal dispute is between Neowiz, another Korean online game company, and Japan's Konami. Konami claims that ``DJ Max,'' a series of games developed by a Neowiz subsidiary, infringes its patent for rhythm games.