Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa Website has a "Message from the Tabula Rasa Team," saying NCsoft is closing down the science fiction MMORPG at the end of February 2009, expressing their pride in having created a game with "unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there," but ultimately admitting that "the game never achieved the player population we hoped for." In the meantime the game will go free to play as of January 10, 2009, and they say: "We can assure you that through the next couple of months we'll be doing some really fun things in Tabula Rasa, and we plan to make staying on a little longer worth your while. For more details about what we are doing for Tabula Rasa players, please click here." Kotaku has a follow-up on this from NCsoft's David Swofford who says there will be layoffs as a result of this. Tabula Rasa, which means "clean slate" was designed by Ultima creator Richard Garriott, who recently returned from a trip to space and announced he was leaving NCsoft to pursue "new interests." Thanks nin.