Cheats-Area.com

If you haven't really heard of the MMORPG mentioned in the title, just relax: neither have we... And we're dealing with lots of games every single day. We just know that Tabula Rasa, the game supervised by the famous Richard Gariott, has unsatisfactory sales and that some layoffs are envisioned.

During a conference-call with NC Soft investors, the Korean company's CEO Lee Jae-ho announced that the disastrous results of the game in which more than 1 billion won were invested have determined the board to 'reduce' the size of the Austin studio.

"Because of this disappointing result, some downsizing in Austin is inevitable. We are going to revamp our Austin development organization," Jae-ho told investors, according to Korea Times.

We don't know yet the number of the employees affected by the job-cuts, but NC Soft's CEO mentioned some of them will be kept to provide support for the existing Tabula Rasa subscribers.

It appears that the game is the most expensive investment for NC Soft ever, from many points of view: according to Korea Times, building the game cost no less than 100 billion won, in addition to the 14 billion won paid to the Gariott brothers in company shares in order to have them as leaders of the Austin project. The game barely made 5 billion won last year, and a disappointing 15 billion won are projected for 2008.
 
"If you talk about our development cost we spent in the past several years, probably we are not making any money from this `Tabula Rasa' project. That should be the reality," Lee Jae-ho added.

The Austin studio was once NC Soft's biggest subsidiary outside the Korean borders, with more than 300 employees hired under Gariott's command.