It can’t be helped. Nomura is very, very bitter about what happened with Versus (something tells me Shimomura is too). If I had the chance to be petty and screw my employers over who f—ked with me while having the protection of a multi-billion media conglomerate, I’d take that chance every time.
It doesn’t help that Kingdom Hearts is a bestseller and moneymaker for Disney, while they handed over the Avengers license, another moneymaking IP, and SE somehow managed to screw it up. Disney can be very unforgiving, and now that Nomura and his pet project is probably the only thing they managed to benefit from SE, you can bet the lion has its teeth bared if SE so much as raises a hand against Nomura; now they’re letting him get away with anything under pain of litigation from The Mouse. Of course, this isn’t fact, just a scenario I think would be happening behind closed doors.
This isn’t a defense for Nomura, just a hypothesized scenario of why there’s a lot of Not!Noctises running around. I’m surprised he made Riku take on that look though, since Sora has a closer connection by virtue of name and interviews.