Knowingly receiving stolen property, which this code is, is illegal. The only reason things are they way they are not is that, as far as we know, NCSOFT has decided not to do anything about it. That could change in the next 5 seconds or never. The code is in the wild and anyone can start a server. So NCSOFT has to make the decision if they want to spend the money and time to play whack a mole.
Code is copyrighted, and the copyright will last decades. It does not matter if NCSoft has done nothing about it before, or it’s fallen into disuse. It’s not been orphaned and NCSoft can exercise it’s rights whenever it wants. NCSoft will never win whack a mole, but it could be inclined to at least go after the biggest violators, and ensure that no large scale operations exist, and none in the public eye. That would still ruin the game for most players, myself included.
Is that not what I just said?