14 DAY TRIAL // The fate of another promising online RPG game is unknown for the moment, since Flagship Studio, Hellgate: London developers, was shut down and all its employees fired. This news comes as a strange surprise from a company which had a promising game in the works (Mythos) and an online publishing and hosting company called ping0.
After the closure of the studio, according to anonymous sources, three of the executives from Flagship used their personal funds to pay their employees for the previous days. This means that the studio was probably in a huge financial mess that the employees were not even hoping to get out of. And that's a real sad thing to hear, not only because so many talented people have lost their jobs (this is confirmed by their linkedin profile), but because Hellgate's fate is now unsure.
However, reports confirm that the rights to the Mythos franchise went to HanbitSoft (a Korean publisher) while Comerica Bank gets Hellgate: London on a past loan agreement. The Asian publishers are, however, interested in keeping Hellgate online (in Asia, at least) and promised to begin talks with the bank and see if an agreement can be reached.
"It is unfortunate that Flagship turned down additional investments HanbitSoft offered to make that would have allowed it to keep its doors open," a HanbitSoft's lawyer told webiste Hellgate Guru. "HanbitSoft hopes to work with Comerica and some of the team at Flagship to see if there is a way to continue to generate content to keep Hellgate online in Asia and to finish the development of Mythos," he added.
Flagship Studio was formed by the ex-Blizzard North staff (the ones responsible for creating the history-making Diablo franchise) and they launched the action-RPG Hellgate last fall. However, the game's success was not the one anticipated by the developers or fans of the RPG genre. Hopefully, all the employees will manage to get new jobs and start working on great titles ASAP.