This sort of platitude does rather neglect the specifics. The cobbler is incentivised to make shoes because they anticipate selling shoes, not in order to lock them in their basement and let them collect dust - and indeed, if they did the latter, we'd gain little by incentivising them to do so.
On the contrary: it is quite possible to make the cobbler feel that he should sit on his talents and skills and not make shoes. Simply do not allow him to profit from them.
If he makes shoes that he sells for enormous sums, such that he only has to make a few dozen a year to live a lavish lifestyle, the same arguments that claim NCSoft shouldn't be allowed to "sit" on this IP could be used to say he shouldn't be allowed to "sit" on his shoe-making skills and refuse to make shoes that everybody can afford.
It is worth noting that NCSoft isn't "incentivized" to sit on this IP, either. That they are doing so means we either don't see the profit they expect to make, or that they are irrational. We may gain little by allowing them to do so, but we gain little by allowing that cobbler to keep his shoes in his basement rather than selling them. And yet, if we forcibly took from that cobbler his shoes, other cobblers would realize that they could not choose to whom to sell them and for what price, either, and would feel less incentivized to make shoes.
If we take the IP from NCSoft, what's to stop "us" from taking it from anybody else? When a company cannot count on being able to treat their intellectual property like any other property, they are disincentivized from investing in it.
Cryptic were incentivised to create City of Heroes because the law created a structure to take our money for playing it, not by the idea that the law was also going to enable another company entirely to hide it under the mattress and not take anyone's money for it in eight years' time.
Cryptic may have sold it to NCSoft, but they had reasons for doing so.Without the freedom to do so - without the incentive of that potential for backing, and heck, without the backing from those who have money to support you through your efforts of creating the work - we will see far fewer creative works produced.
Again, NCSoft either sees profit in this - perhaps has plans for using it in some way in their ongoing plans - or NCSoft is being as irrational as the cobbler who suddenly hides away his stock in the basement. There is no incentive for them to sit on it, not in IP law. No more than there is incentive for a cobbler to let shoes gather dust in his basement when people clamor at his door to buy them.
Is our current IP law perfect? No, it isn't. But you ARE advocating post-hoc slavery - or at least theft - when you advocate intellectual property not belonging to its creator (or the person to whom he sold it) if he doesn't distribute it in the way
you feel he should.
Now. Regarding NPCs in MWM's products. The legalese behind "you can still use it" is very, very involved. It is not recommended that you give us NPCs that are beloved creations independent of your efforts to work with MWM on our projects. You can, and it is an opportunity to see them enshrined in a game as part of an official canon, but the legal issues are such that you ARE giving up rights to exclusivity.
If you're a pro-Choice type, imagine if I were to get Segev included in the game, but retained full rights to use him however else I chose. I then took all the iconic imagery around him and his nefarious villainy, and used him in a wide-spread real-world campaign comparing abortion to baby-murdering and tying - through the auspices of Segev - the whole project to a pro-life agenda.
If you're a conservative Republican, imagine if somebody's personal hero NPC - Patriotism Man or something - were in the game, but their retention of full rights allowed them to advertise using Patriotism Man for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming elections, and tie the project to that political bent.
We have to be very careful about the rights to anything we include in our game, because we want to be able to control the perception of what the game as a whole represents. While I, personally, would
love to see a roughly even split of political, ethical, moral, and other beliefs amongst our NPCs, and enable this to have within the game-world the same sorts of debates that happen in the real one (and maybe milk the darned politicians for some of their campaign funds to support the game), even THAT is risky.
People play these games as a form of escapism. It is generally best if we AVOID bringing real-world politics in, as much as possible. It risks too much painting one viewpoint as "heroic" and the other as "villainous." And while some would doubtless agree with the portrayals, others would be offended.
And because we need to control these associations, and because of even stickier issues of "who does a sponsor approach to use such-and-such NPC?" we need to be very careful about who "owns" and how people can use NPCs.
That doesn't mean there won't be a lot people can do with their NPCs, necessarily. William Shatner appears at Star Trek conventions as "Captain Kirk," still, I believe. I don't know if Paramount gets a cut of that. But you can bet they'd want a cut of anything that "Captain Kirk" appeared in to endorse a product. And the right to say "heck no" if they thought that endorsement damaged their Star Trek property.