NCsoft files lawsuit to thwart TERA launch

[madpersian]

That's pretty funny. A bit of a reach though.

[CasualPlayer]

I doubt any of this will legally be settled by May 1st. If the game releases NA and then a court finds NCSoft to be correct are they gonna shut the servers down after we've been playing for awhile? If that's not possible who cares about any of this.

[Sonomaa]

why cant we get another MMO with catgirls like FFXI

WHY ISNT A CAT FINE TOO

[Sonomaa]

I doubt any of this will legally be settled by May 1st. If the game releases NA and then a court finds NCSoft to be correct are they gonna shut the servers down after we've been playing for awhile? If that's not possible who cares about any of this.

servers wont be shut down after the launch unless they lose the lawsuit hardcore, which is unlikely. what is likely to happen, if the courts get convinced, is that ncsoft will take some of the cash from TERA. Really thats all this is, a cashgrab. Lineage 3 looks like a diablo clone to me, I have zero interest in playing a game that wont be as good as the big D. If they lose, expect more DLC buyable content that should have been included in patches and such, maybe an expansion released a little earlier than it should have

[jinxxed0]

Whats with all the NCsoft hate. They have great MMOs under their belt. City of Heroes, Guild Wars, and Lineage 2. I've had a great experience with them for the last 7 or so years. What possible problems could you have had with them? The only thing I can think of is if you goofed yourself and forgot your own log in info or what email you used to register. People that have never done customer service, let alone work at any job, don't seem to understand that a companies deal with 90% people who are angry and complete idiots. Granted, there will be some jerks out there (most of them seem to work at paypal), but as far as policies go, they're pretty good (except for paypal. they policies are a joke).

I honestly think most of you saying how terrible NCsoft is are just upset and making crap up just to be dramatic. I like tera myself, I wouldn't spend 15 a month on it of course, but i'd play on a decent private server. Either way, I hope NC soft loses this battle, I still like them though.

[FriskUni]

/tumbleweed

[Senji]

People's hate for NCSoft has nothing to do with how you're treated on the phone, nor how many mobs you had to kill by yourself with no pat on the back.

[Hitoshura]

/tumbleweed

Pretty much, it's not even worth bringing up NCsoft's (usa) terrible handling of Aion.

[Avarice]

On a different note, has there been any update on the lawsuit or has it already been brushed aside?

[Senji]

No update, it has only been a month. I doubt there will be a press release anyways.

[Bombur]

http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forum...it-Over?page=1

Just wanted to update what was going on over in Korea. Remember BHS appealed the lower court decision over in Korea ?

Well the Supreme court of Korea finally came down with a decision today, and decided that while BHS itself was not guilty of any charges or wrongdoings.

But charged YH PARK (former TERA's executive director, who stepped down last Aug.) and two other former NCSOFT Employees of Leaking Corporate trade secrets, and each have to pay 2 billion won each in restitution to NCsoft, and will now face criminal charges. Criminal charge sentencing will be held at a later date.



This is the final ruling of the Supreme court of Korea.

http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=43641

[WhiteChocobo]

$1,763,511.51 :D Hurray for google!

[Coren]

So the game isn't delayed? Good.

For those others that were curious, 2 billion won is around $1.76mil.

edit: damn, beat me. Stupid customers

[niwaar]

interesting that the people involved are guilty but the company itself gets off free and clear. Wasn't the original ruling for something like 10.5million$ total from Bluehole itself? Eitherway, i would love to know what SKorean civil law will make of this. They make it sound like the civil courts will now rule in favor of NC in the civil suit.

[Avarice]

For a non-new/non-indie gaming company, I wouldn't think $5.25 Million to be much of a win, but whatever; I'm just glad this won't (seemingly) delay/terminate the game over here.

[brand]

interesting that the people involved are guilty but the company itself gets off free and clear. Wasn't the original ruling for something like 10.5million$ total from Bluehole itself? Eitherway, i would love to know what SKorean civil law will make of this. They make it sound like the civil courts will now rule in favor of NC in the civil suit.

Well I had a fancy answer set up, but click of the wrong button and whoosh.

The core of what I wrote before is that in the US complaint, filed Jan 9, before all of the recent K-court decisions, is that the ~$2mil that the K-trial court initially awarded NCSoft from BHS was reversed at K-appellate court (see paragraph 57, pg 16), and the K-Supreme Court agreed with K-appellate (according to the post above and some sketchy google translating). BHS as an entity did not get off 'free and clear'. It had its own trial set and won.

Similarly, from the US complaint, we can extrapolate that the K-courts found as a matter of fact that YH Park and Co "stole and transferred an extensive amount of proprietary data to . . . personal storage devices, such as flash drives before leaving NCsoft." (Paragraph 58 ) From earlier in the complaint, this is expressly against their company policy and the individual signed NDA/secrecy agreements (taken to be true since the K-courts convicted, right?). That makes them personally liable to the company independent of what they did with the information, and independent of BHS as an aggregate.

There is a reference to that data in the US complaint, which alleges that the K-courts found to be true as a matter of fact that Bluehole set up a task force to recover information that was stolen. The US complaint however does not mention whether this was upheld at later stages in the judicial process (likely because appeals were still pending), but these allegations need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Likewise, paragraph 61 is misleadingly injected between paragraphs of "The court found..." (and is one of a few misleading points in this section). This paragraph makes no allegation that the K-courts found any of this to be true, which if it were, could be quite tarnishing to BHS/EME's US defense.

Image of the paragraphs:

Spoiler: show

To be fair to the lawyers, this is just the initial complaint, and it is meant to be a persuasive document. Very likely, EME's response to the complaint will have refuted probably almost every paragraph of information anyhow, and thus bring the alleged "fact" to court to determine the validity.

And of course, IANAL.

[e]Avarice, I think those award values are against each person they found criminally liable to NCsoft, which is definitely a win against individuals.

[WhiteChocobo]

Official statement from En Masse on the forums

Over the last couple of years, we've been working to release TERA. We're close to getting the job done right, as TERA closed beta test players can attest. But since February, we've been subjected to entirely too much innuendo related to a lawsuit filed against our startup by NCsoft in the United States—a suit that seems designed to disrupt the launch of TERA in North America. The latest round of that innuendo even goes so far as to try to drag in a separate case that was brought in Korea not against Bluehole, but against certain former employees of NCSoft.

In the event you've read the court filings here in the US, you'll find that they're remarkably easy to read for legal documents; they certainly appear to have been written with an eye toward public opinion. NCsoft is a billion-plus dollar corporation, so they can afford to have a team of high-priced lawyers spin out reasonable-sounding documents. These baseless accusations have led to unfounded rumors, which is disappointing and unfair. But that doesn’t mean the rumors are true.

It is no surprise that the latest spin on the story has it that "TERA is guilty." That is wrong. For the record, after extensive Korean proceedings, Bluehole Studio was NOT found to have made any use of any NCsoft trade secrets in the form of source code or game design. In fact, TERA didn’t even exist when the Korean case against the former NCsoft employees arose, and neither did En Masse Entertainment. In Korean civil proceedings, Bluehole was also found NOT to have been responsible for the exodus of NCsoft developers.

What is a fact: If you're a legal scholar, you'll note that NCsoft hasn't filed a motion (known as an injunction) here in the US to prevent the launch of TERA. That's kind of surprising, because their legal documents originally said they would supposedly suffer grievous harm if TERA is launched.

Another fact: If you read NCsoft’s complaint, they actually admit that their motive in bringing the suit is to prevent Bluehole and En Masse from competing with them: "Since the release of TERA in Korea, NCsoft's Lineage sales and market share have declined, as have sales and market share of other NCsoft products."

To our fans and followers, we want to let you all know that we are not going to let a corporate bully or baseless rumor mill derail us from focusing our efforts on delivering TERA to you on May 1, 2012.

Source: http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forum...Criminal-Trial

[Divimise]

I notice a lot of focus on the release date of the game, but I dont see all this money transfer and allegations causing the start date any trouble. With MMO's it is usually that the company will stop putting in new content because they dont care or ran out of money. So shouldn't the concern be not the start date but more on how long the game can run before shutting down?

Can Bluehole not just deny the claims they knew about and tried to secure the data taken by the employees? What else did they do that could come down on Tera or its income to keep the game going if the blame gets all put on those who took the data in the first place?