Comment by gmerc

Interplay was the publisher. They stole royalties which provided the leverage for BioWare to buy itself out of the contractual onligations and publish NWN with Atari.

NWN being one of the first games to use master server and key technologies at scale was motivated to detect publisher royalty theft by tracking sold copies (and indeed an Atari division in Europe tried selling copies of NWN with copied keys) not just traditional piracy because the company had first hand experience with it.

Black Isle, an interplay first party studio made Infinity Engine spin off games which gets people confused here.

Source: Ex Bioware