Thursday afternoon, a federal court jury found in favor of Richard Garriott in his ongoing battle with NCsoft Corp., awarding him damages of $28M. He had requested damages of $47M. Lord British filed his suit in May of 2009 alleging in part that NCsoft fired him and then forced him to sell 400,000 shares that were part of his compensation agreement at a significant loss due to market conditions. NCsoft alleged that Garriott instead left the company voluntarily and instead sold his shares over a 6 month period in 2008.
The trial lasted three and a half days, and jury deliberations lasted only three hours before the verdict was returned in Garriott’s favor. According to Garriott’s testimony, he was telephoned by an NCsoft executive while in quarantine in Russia after returning from a space trip, and told that his days with the company were over. As part of this, it was alleged that his open letter to the community was actually written by NCsoft without his approval as a means of forcing him out. He also claimed that under his contract with NCsoft, he would have been allowed up to 10 years to exercise his stock options.
Richard Garriott’s biggest project at NCsoft was Tabula Rasa, a game which is estimated to have cost over $100M to develop, and was largely unsuccessful despite being praised for it’s innovative mechanics and play style. He joined NCsoft when his company Destination Games based in Austin was merged with NCsoft’s United States operations to become NCsoft Austin. Tabula Rasa’s closure was announced 20 days after Garriott’s leaving by the remaining staff, and operations shut down on February 27, 2009.
This victory is sure to sour the relationship between the two further, and the South Korea based publisher hasn’t ruled out appealing the award.
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