Lineage III Disaster: Estimated 1 Billion Loss, 90 Devs Flee

The Seoul Metropolitan Police suspect seven former NCsoft employees pilfered and peddled Lineage III code to a major Japanese company, according to these guys. Purportedly the suspected thieves also leaked Lineage III’s design doc last September, (I have obtained a copy and the game was to have a long ass leveling treadmill and sad pandas.) The article also divulges internal strife at NCsoft lead to one senior game developer’s termination with NCsoft citing poor leadership skills as the cause, which ultimately ended in a shock wave with more than ninety developers leaving over the one removal.

The 1 billion estimation is derived from how much money both versions of Lineage farmed from the masses - it didn’t do so well in our neck of the woods and you won’t find many players wrought over this news and I could care less if Lineage III is even released here. In truth, the severity of this corporate espionage is nuts and the big question that’s pertinent for us is what impact this will have on other NCsoft mmog developments in the NA/UK market - maybe Lum’s project will be axed or scaled back? The financial damage may not be 1 billion as the NCsoft spokesman claims, but it certainly scales into the millions. My advice to NCsoft: don’t hire former dupers or gold farmers - outsource the work!

As for ninety devs fleeing after the one lead dev was canned - holy shit, I have three theories: insane loyalty, horrible working conditions or not enough pay. This is a huge blow to NCsoft and I can only imagine they have a lot of work to do behind-the-scenes in keeping their employees happy and adjusting security measures - where do you go from something like this? Do you continue Lineage III’s development with a new team or scrape it all? The name is a huge brand over there so whatever game you slap with the Lineage title is going to be worth its weight in gold.