Not everyone is literate in contract law, so most people won’t notice these kinds of hidden clauses that allow this. In this case it was a combination of signing over the IP to the developing company because that’s pretty standard procedure. Together with the investors managing to get a majority share of the company and forcing the original devs out by vote.

Just one of the reasons why smart people just license out their IPs. This way no one can take it from you. But again, you have to know quite a bit about contract law to know how this works.