But I know from experience that NCsoft protects its IPs about as jealously as a vulture protects a fresh carcass from smaller scavengers. It doesn't matter that an IP isn't making them a single red cent or even a hundredth of a Won, they'll squat on it and refuse to budge.
Exactly.
I've pondered why this should be the case with
every MMO NCsoft have closed and then kept the IP - which basically is
all of them. It's my belief now that the single reason for this is NCsoft founder and CEO Taek-jin Kim. And while it's undeniable that the previous MMO closures have all been financially motivated, that still doesn't explain why he's never parted with a single IP. I don't believe the decision to retain these IPs was business motivated at all - not for any of them.
I believe Kim sees himself as a creative visionary, and in some way regards
himself as directly responsible for the creativity behind the MMOs NCsoft makes. So when he closes an MMO, he selfishly hangs on to the IPs because he regards them as
his creations. And as long as he has the IPs still in NCsoft's hands, he can wander down his MMO Hall of Fame, looking at the IPs frozen in their display cases, and he can live vicariously through the work of others, thinking to himself "
I made these worlds!".
I reckon it's all about him -
his wants,
his desires,
his ego. And to be perfectly honest, I'm beginning to wonder now if the reason CoH was closed when it was is to do with Kim's voluntary 'soft merger' with Nexon. I've always thought that financially speaking, keeping CoH alive would make far more sense from the perspective of a joint Nexon-NCsoft association...which is one of the reasons its sudden closure so soon after the Nexon-NCsoft merger (and perhaps more interestingly,
less than ONE week after Min Kim took over as head of Nexon US) made so little sense to me.
And so in the absence of logic, I simply stopped thinking logically...and the answer magically became clear...
TJKim wanted CoH closed so
he could preserve the IP in his personal company Hall of Fame, his last 'hurrah' before taking a backseat to Nexon. And it served a dual purpose too - not only did he get to keep a unique creative jewel, he also got some vicarious payback against the west, land of Tabula Rasa (which is also still sitting in his IP vault of course).
I'm firmly convinced now that this whole thing was personal. And in making such a petty personal move, TJKim has betrayed tens of thousands of loyal customers, many of whom have paid him faithfully every month for eight years. He lost their trust when he tried to kill their dreams - and as a visionary, that's about the biggest crime he could've committed, for in betraying us, he has also betrayed his own vision for his company.