Garriott wins $28m from NCsoft

By Oli Welsh Published 30 July, 2010

Court agrees that he was fired, lost out.

Richard Garriott, the father of Ultima and creator of Tabula Rasa, has won his lawsuit against former employers NCsoft and been awarded $28 million by the jury in the case.

Garriott sued the Korean publisher for fraud last year, claiming he was fired, but that NCsoft had "re-characterised" his departure as voluntary.

This meant Garriott had to sell his stock options in a depressed market rather than hold on to them, which he claims lost him dozens of millions of dollars.

As The Austin-American Statesman reports, the court agreed and awarded the artist formerly known as Lord British $28 million in damages.

"I am extremely pleased with the jury's decision," he said in a statement. "The facts were clear that my departure from NCsoft was not voluntary. I am very pleased with the final award."

NCsoft said it would consider options for taking the matter further.

Garriott and his brother joined NCsoft when it bought their studio Destination Games during the development of Tabula Rasa. The sci-fi MMO flopped, and NCsoft informed Garriott that he was to leave shortly after his return to earth from a $20 million spot of space tourism. The game was discontinued a few weeks later.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (22) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • RFT #1 2 years ago

    So that's his next ticket to space paid for, then...

  • roquey Verified Lead Quality Assurance Tester and Compliance Specialist, Universally Speaking #2 2 years ago

    @ KinectSucks What would entitle West and Zampella to more? Because they made higher selling games? the only good thing out of that money is that itl give Respawn a helping hand.

  • LazyDan #3 2 years ago

    More money to fund the crazy. I once read that Garriot had speakers embedded in his walls which would randomly play sounds to freak visitors out.

  • Doctor_What #4 2 years ago

    Holy crap. No-one needs that much money.

  • Kerome #5 2 years ago

    Good. NCSoft shouldn't be allowed to get away with treating creative talent like crapola...

  • Psychotext #6 2 years ago

    That's a tidy pay day!

  • Pardoz #7 2 years ago

    It's worth keeping in mind that the court district Garriott sued in is famous for its hostility to foreign defendants (which no doubt played a role in the choice of venue). It's also worth keeping in mind that the verdict and the award are both subject to appeal, and even if a higher court doesn't overturn the verdict (and honestly, getting fired shouldn't be a surprise when you turn in a commercial and critical flop five years late and way over budget) the award of damages is likely to get slashed drastically.

  • pauleyc #8 2 years ago

    @LazyDan

    "I once read that Garriot had speakers embedded in his walls which would randomly play sounds to freak visitors out."

    It's not that unusual if you consider what the house is supposed to be.

  • drxym #9 2 years ago

    @Kerome, that talent produced a game which had failure stamped on it from its inception. I played the beta and it was just so dull, largely consisting of grungy space marines shooting robots to collect bits of armor and weapon mods. Rinse and repeat. I felt no sense of wonder, just a sense that the entire game was drab and boring. It felt worse than Star Wars Galaxies and that's saying something. I am not surprised the project got canned.
    Edited by 1 at 30/07/10 @ 10:30

  • Koozer #10 2 years ago

    I liked Tabula Rasa...

  • Koborover #11 2 years ago

    Wow, that's a lot of money. I hope this doesn't affect the development of Guild Wars 2 (NCsoft owns ArenaNet).

  • Hog-lumps #12 2 years ago

    @ pauleyc
    It's not that unusual if you consider what the house is supposed to be.

    From the Wiki article you link to;

    "In 1997 the house was broken into by a deranged fan. Garriott held him off with an Uzi, firing a warning shot while waiting for police to arrive."

    Crikey! :)

  • iokthemonkey #13 2 years ago

    Yeah, I don't get it - you screw-up your job, your company fires you but - to save face - says you left of your own free will and as a result of being useless, you get a big pay out?

    Yes, I know the forced sale of the stocks is crap but maybe NCSoft stocks were trading at a lower value because - I dunno - somebody spent a fortune on the development of a game that tanked? I wonder who that could be...?

  • Cjail #14 2 years ago

    It is official: being fired is no more a bad thing.

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #15 2 years ago

    So the conman wins out in the end... - thats a fair comment TBH considering the history of TR and how Garrot basically acted like the 'head' in the PR but really knew nothing of what actally was going on

  • nobloodyname #16 2 years ago

    Dear me. It all sounds so made up. And yet it's true. What a world we live in, eh?

  • optimusprym8 #17 2 years ago

    As an ex-employee of NCsoft made redundant partially as a result of the TR flop & restructuring into NCsoft West, I am gutted RG "won" but chuckling at the comments here

  • Psi #18 2 years ago

    That guy is a cunning mentalist.

    Lord Britsh? Lord up his own arse more like.

    TS could have been good, but was just lacking something.

  • hiddenranbir #19 2 years ago

    So Garriot gets rewarded for team leading a terrible product to failure, awesome!

  • YenRug #20 2 years ago

    I think some people are assuming he's got the payout for being fired, it's a bit more complicated than that.

    He's not disputing whether he should have been fired, or not, he's disputing how it was represented.

    By claiming that he resigned, he was forced to sell all of his shares in NCSoft (I think one site mentioned 400,000 of them) under his terms of employment. If he was fired, however, he could hold onto his shares for up to 10 years before disposing of them. The problem was that he was forced to sell his shares at the height of the bank/stock market collapse, with the shares now having recovered significantly; he has sued for the loss on the sale of those shares, not for the loss of employment.

  • Nephirion #21 2 years ago

    Can we sue Richard Garriott for Tabula Rasa?

  • bemaniac #22 2 years ago

    yes! damn straight! Thats goddamn justice right there. God I love this news story it's made my year better.