NCsoft

NCsoft Corporation
㈜엔씨소프트

Type	Public (KRX: 036570)
Founded	March 11, 1997
Headquarters	Seoul, South Korea (HQ) (Subsidiary Companies) Osaka, Japan Shanghai, China Brighton, England Austin, Texas, USA Seattle, Washington, USA Mountain View, California, USA Orange County, California, USA Bangkok, Thailand
Key people	T.J. Kim, CEO
Industry	Video games Entertainment
Products	Lineage Guild Wars Aion: Tower of Eternity City of Heroes
Employees	2,448
Website	http://www.ncsoft.com

NCsoft (KRX: 036570) is a South Korean based online computer game company, which produced and published massively multiplayer online role-playing games including Lineage and Guild Wars. Lineage III, the sequel to the successful Lineage II, is slated for 2011.

History

NCsoft was originally founded in March 1997 by T.J. Kim, a business software developer and author of the Korean word processor Hangul. One of the company's first products was NC HTML Editor. In September 1998, NCsoft launched its first and most popular game, Lineage. Lineage was the first MMORPG to exceed the record of 100,000 concurrent users for the first time in Korea in December 2000. The success of this game helped the company expand to locations in Taiwan, China, Japan, and the United States.

The company established a US subsidiary called NC Interactive (based in Austin, Texas) as a partnership with Richard Garriott's Destination Games in April 2001. NCsoft programmer Jake Song also moved to Austin in order to stimulate development. The branch developed MMORPGs and acts as the home to NC Interactive, NCsoft's division for support in North America (which had been established in May 2000).

Launched in July 2004, NCsoft Europe is a wholly owned subsidiary with its main office in Brighton, England. They brought City of Heroes to several European countries on February 4, 2005 and established Lineage II servers (Teon and Franz).

It was announced at E3 2007 that NCsoft had become an exclusive third party Sony developer, and will be developing exclusive games for the Playstation Network.^[1]

On September 10th, 2008, NCsoft announced the formation of NC West, a subsidiary which manages NCsoft's other western subsidiaries, and plans to establish a headquarters for that subsidiary in Seattle, Washington by the end of 2008.^[2]

Stolen Code

On April 27, 2007, Seoul Metropolitan Police said that seven former employees of NCsoft are suspected of selling the Lineage III source code to a major Japanese game company. According to NCsoft, the potential damaged cost may exceed $1billion USD. ^[3]

Worlds.com Patent Lawsuit

On Dec 24, 2008, NCsoft was targeted in a patent infringement case over its entire series of MMO software titles.^[4] Worlds.com has filed suit in Texas claiming NCsoft has infringed on its patent for a "system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space.", and are pushing for an injunction to stop all games covered in the suit along with seeking unspecified damages. While only NCsoft has been named in the suit, many sources have observed that the patent (if upheld in this case) could be used to draw royalties from basically every MMO currently running.^[5] Worlds.com CEO Thom Kidrin has recently stated that if they win their suit against NCsoft that his company fully intends to pursue other companies such as Activision Blizzard (for World of Warcraft) and Linden Lab (for Second Life).^[6][7] An NCsoft representative is quoted as saying,"We can't comment on potential litigation except to say that NCsoft takes all legal action seriously -- even if the company believes a lawsuit has no merit. We intend to defend ourselves vigorously."

Business Practices

Customer dissatisfaction with the business practices of NCSoft in North America have been noticeably increasing. NCSoft has a score of "F" with the Better Business Bureau of Austin, the worst score possible. According to the Better Business Bureau, in the last 36 months, 67 complaints have been filed against NCSoft.^[8] NCSoft is not an accredited member of the BBB. BBB accredited businesses must pay a fee for accreditation review/monitoring and for support of BBB services to the public. Accreditation is not required to gain a favorable score.

Titles

• Aion: The Tower of Eternity
• Atrix
• Auto Assault
• Blade & Soul
• City of Heroes
• City of Villains
• Dragonica
• Dungeon Runners
• Exteel
• Guild Wars
  • Guild Wars Prophecies
  • Guild Wars Factions
  • Guild Wars Nightfall
  • Guild Wars: Eye of the North
• Guild Wars 2
• Lineage
• Lineage II
• Lineage III
• Metal Black
• Punch Monster
• Smash Star
• SP Jam
• Steel Dog
• Tabula Rasa
• Web-board Games

References

External links

• NCsoft Homepage
• NCsoft English Homepage
• NCsoft 2008 New Games