That's the typical story. If you ever succeed, soon some assholes without a clue but with a lot of dough show up. Eventually it gets too hard to refuse getting personally something like 10 million in an instant and so people cave in. Realizing they've just sold out to a bunch of assholes and everything's going to hell, everyone with the capacity to do so leaves. What's unfortunate is that most of the time the actual killer team gets broken, people struggle to get a similar team together, they start enjoying their money more and working less and then there's the fact that they've lost all their IP's. But that's practically how great games die.
money is the great motivator and the great destroyer, money motivates people to do great things for the potential money provides, and more frequently than not destroys whatever potential those people had, once they've obtained it.
Truly one of the hardest games of all time! I mean, who doesn't remember getting their ass kicked by a slime just outside the starting area, repeatedly, to the point where you realize why you never see anyone else outside the castle?