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Last November the man behind the Ultima RPG series, Richard Garriott, left his partnership with the Korea-based MMO publisher NCSoft under "voluntary" circumstances. In a story broken Tuesday, Garriott now claims he was actually fired from the company and his "voluntary" departure was a manipulated story presented to the gaming community, which in turn lost him millions in stock options owed to him.
Garriott claims that by NCSoft stating his departure as a "voluntary resignation" rather than a "termination" which would have allowed his stock options to last until 2011, he was forced to prematurely sell his stock options within 90 days, cheating him out of millions.
From the complaint:
In... November 2008, Chris Chung, President of NCSoft's North American operations, informed Mr. Garriott that NCSoft has decided to "part company." Although Mr. Garriott objected to his dismissal, Mr. Chung insisted that the decision was final - Mr. Garriott had to go.
As Mr. Garriott prepared to leave NCSoft, however, Mr. Garriott learned that NCSoft had internally re-characterized his termination by Mr. Chung as a "voluntary" resignation... This mischaracterization had profound and detrimental effects on Mr. Garriott's stock options: if NCSoft terminated Mr. Garriott's employment (which it did) then the options - worth tens of millions of dollars - would remain in effect until 2011; but if Mr. Garriott resigned voluntarily (which he did not), then NCsoft might have terminated those options... within ninety days of his departure...
NCsoft forced Mr. Garriott into a Hobson's choice of exercising his options... and forced him to sell into one of the worst equity markets in modern history...
In his lawsuit, Garriott alleges breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation by NCSoft regarding the nature of his departure and is claiming recovery damages to the tune of more than US$27 million.
You can read more on the story and the full legal complaint at Game Politics.
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