Say what? NCsoft sold rights to an old IP? I need to go outside and look for flying pigs.
ProSebien paid 7 million to SOE/Daybreak Studios for the rights to publish EQ2 in EU for a time too. That kind of stuff goes on in Europe all the time. What with the currency/law differences it's easier to get local EU publishers to run NA/Asian games in EU. Apparently Innova won the deal to publish Lineage 2 in EU instead of the usual clusterfluff company GameForge. Lineage 2 is still up and running, even here in NA, it's just run here by NCWest like Aion NA is (complete with tons of gold farmers, botters and lag, but I digress).
The infamous GameForge is currently publishing Aion EU and Tera EU and mucking them up even worse than NC does (charging for every little thing, even using the mail/broker, and having terrible customer service etc.) so that all the EU players have migrated to the NA servers for both games, as per usual with GameForge.
As a matter of fact, Tera is a Korean game (Bluehole Studios are the developers). En Masse runs Tera NA and does a great job with the community and game itself (great events, etc.).
Do you think World of Warcraft is published by Activision in Asia? Nope, there are local Chinese/Korean/etc. publishers who handle NA games in China, Korea, etc.
It's just that this Innova takes less heat than the rest for the job they're doing with Lineage 2: You don't see pitchforks and torches whenever any EU mentions their name. And the Lineage 2 classic server idea was theirs of course, as was the mandate for only 15,000 signatures on a petition so that work could begin on it. Those EU Lineage 2 players are so lucky!
I would think that Innova paid a big lump sum for the right to publish Lineage 2 EU, and their contract could be terminated by NCSoft if they don't meet X requirements (whatever those may be). I would also think that NCSoft still ultimately owns the IPs, code, etc.
These "other country" publishers usually run a server snapshot (much like CoX i23 would be) with no means or permission to alter any code or change the game in any way. All patches and updates must come from the mother country's devs (Korea's Bluehole Studios for Tera, NCSoft Korea for Aion and Lineage 2, etc.), and these updates and patches are usually significantly behind in their launch date from the home country's version of the game. The "other country" publishers usually handle language translations/localization, which slows things down a bit.
