Recently, there has been as much drama surrounding the Korean developer NCSoft as there is in a US series. Now, corrupt employees have been exposed and dismissed.
NCSoft operates here as “the suits” behind Guild Wars 2 and WildStar. The Korean publisher decides on whether developers will be laid off and how the flow of money looks. Furthermore, NCSoft is known as the publisher that doesn’t hesitate long when things look bad, having shut down “City of Heroes” prematurely. They are also known as the company that simply does not bring Blade & Soul to the West.
NCSoft itself has some irons in the fire in Korea and is one of the largest MMO studios there. In the past two months, they have become embroiled in a complicated power struggle with the number one in Korea, Nexon and are currently securing themselves against the potential for minority shareholders to take over their own company. The two big games that NCSoft has in the pipeline are Lineage Eternal and Project Hon. Project Hon is a legitimate mech shooter that is supposed to run on both mobile platforms and PCs thanks to cloud technology.
They have now dismissed three developers because they enriched themselves. They allegedly hired a company with which they have personal contacts to develop the graphics for Project Hon. As a result, they are said to have embezzled eight-digit sums in Korean Won (10 million Won is approximately 8200 Euros).
They are even considering taking legal action against the three former employees. Project Hon is to be further developed and remain unaffected by the difficulties.
