In fact, in fact!! I view NCSoft as haven STOLEN from ME. They took my six year's worth of cash, which included a lot of extras such as costume stuff - and uncounted hours spent playing and upgrading my characters, and... they just took it, with no recourse at all, and definitely no compensation. I view this as a theft!
Now, wait a second, let's be fair here.
No one is STEALING from you the time that you spent playing a game for your enjoyment. So saying that they took your hours spent playing... frankly, it would be fair to say that they gave you hours of enjoyment playing, in return for your money.
Took your cash, true. I always viewed it as part of my entertainment budget for the month, and money well spent for the entertainment value. But unless there is a claim to be made for the characters having inherent value from existing, rather than for the enjoyment of playing them, it's not like we really built up much value into our characters... personal value, granted, but that's not of relevance to others or to a company.
They took away our hobby/interest/pastime/whatever, despite it being profitable. And since they've made money on the IP overall including development costs, they could sell it without opening up questions of giving in to someone pressuring them for IP based on its losses. So I don't see a reasonable argument for them not to sell the IP (sooner, so that it doesn't lose much value, but still with a reasonable timeframe so that they can recoup losses).
But for all of the wrong that they've done the community, I don't see how we can reasonably classify this as any kind of theft.
Now, if you just want to be unreasonable, well, that's fine. Don't let my interjection slow down the ranting
