he didnt steal the money he stole the games assets so that the original maker couldnt continue making the game with a different artist. so not only did he make a game to compete with the guy he was working for he also sabotaged his competition as he left
"Stole" isn't quite the word, where I agree the guy is a douche and was in the wrong the developer had a lot of fault to take upon himself. He was an old name around LoK forum and not a guy with business sense, he had little idea how to focus a team on a project which is why it was such a clusterfuck of a project. As for the artist when he signed on the developer was the idiot who signed a contract that said he would pay BUT the artist retained all rights to the art assets. That is why I said "stole", since technically the art was in fact his via that travesty of a contract.
Pirate's life for me, on that game. 
Actually the artist torpedoed the project to steal the assets for cloud meadow some sort of drama caused him to throw a fit delete his assets off the server and left breeding season with a c&d for his assets leaving breeding seasons team up shit creek with a hole in the canoe and no paddles.
While this is true, it seems like a lot of people around here have forgotten how abysmally slow the progress on this game was by the end. They were continuously redesigning characters and monsters, which often required them to scrap animations and start from nothing with them, which basically had them treading water progress-wise. Meanwhile they had promised so many monsters and variations to their supporters that it would have taken decades at the pace they were going to actually implement them.
