Namco Bandai, who now own the MMO, are saying that they plan to shut down Hellgate: London on January 31, 2009 because the Flagship Studios developed game is not attracting enough players to justify the day to day costs.

Flagship Studios went down at the end of July and are in no way involved in running the game. Namco Bandai, which co-published the MMO with EA Partners, are now sustaining the game but the server population is very low and there are no plans to create new content or in game events that would attract gamers to Hellgate: London.

David DeMartini, who is representing EA Partners, told Gamasutra that “We thought it would have been slightly higher quality than it turned out to be, and I think the problem with the game was that by the time it got really good, we were four to six months post-release. That was too late; we'd lost the fanbase”. At launch, the game was plagued by bugs, many of them repetitive and critical and the general concept, which blended Diablo like action with the interaction of a MMO, was not sound to begin with. Until the game shuts down, it will continue to be available for free.

It's sad to see a MMO going under and the bad news is that more could follow in the coming months. Tabula Rasa, based on an idea of Richard “Lord British” Garriot, was initially well received, with its fluid combat mechanics and sci fi setting, but it seems that server populations are now dwindling and that the game might also be shut down soon. Age of Conan, developed by Funcom, enjoyed a strong launch with big sales, but at the moment servers are being consolidated to maintain population and Funcom is working hard on implementing elements like Player versus Player mechanics which were supposed to be available in the initial release.