Last year, Richard Garriott (of Ultima, Tabula Rasa and space exploration fame) left massively multiplayer online game developer, NCsoft after he touched down from his trip to space to focus on other ventures. This seems to only be the first half of the story.

After the revelation yesterday that Garriott has filed a lawsuit yesterday in the Texas Western District Court, it appears as though he (as the plaintiff) is seeking $24 million from his former employer, NCsoft, accusing the company of fraud.

From Garriott’s 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 from the company.

“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…”

Hmm. No good.