Flagship Studios Takes A Dive
Posted by Stropp on July 14, 2008
The other big news (you know, other than the Warhammer announcement) over the weekend was the ongoing drama of Flagship Studios. Announcements. Denials. Recriminations. It was all there.
Essentially it started as the Korean distributor of Hellgate: London, Hanbitsoft, claiming that they now owned the IP of the game. Flagship denied it. A war of words ensued. Flagship announced staff layoffs. There was even a request by Hanbitsoft to Hellgate Guru (who broke the news) to remove the story from their website. It was all rather confusing really.
And finally the announcement was made that Flagship was closing down and laying of all employees including those of its subsidiary Ping0. Hanbitsoft were receiving the Mythos IP, and Comerica were getting the rights to Hellgate: London. Comerica, as I understand it, is a finance organization that loaned Flagship funds against the Hellgate IP. Hanbitsoft did likewise.
It all had a similar vibe to the infamous carpark layoffs at Sigil soon after Vanguard was released.
What all this means for Mythos is unclear.
The game has been in development, and beta, for quite some time now and has gathered quite a following. Flagship originally intended it to be a test vehicle for the network infrastructure supporting Hellgate: London, but at some point it evolved into a marketable game in its own right.
Hopefully Hanbitsoft continues development of Mythos, and allows the game to see the light of release. It will be a bit sad if it doesn’t.
I’m also disappointed by some members of the gaming community. I had a quick look at some of the various message boards around the traps, and without exception there were posts by nasty small minded individuals rejoicing in the downfall of, not only Hellgate, but of Flagship Studios. You know, it’s one thing to be disappointed by a game, or to be annoyed by the company that made the game, but to be glad that a whole bunch of people have lost their livelihoods (especially with the economy at the moment) is just mean spirited.
People, it’s just a game. To be happy at someone else’s misfortune because they didn’t perform to your high standards, what does that make you?
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Damn it! I had heard rumours surfacing about the possibility of this, as you say heart goes out to the people who have been paid off.
I really do hope someone picks up mythos, i was under the impression it was almost ready to go live?
Flagship had recently made some big changes to the game to make it more MMOy. I think they also added new areas and new races to play as well. I figured they had at least six more months possibly a year of dev time left.
It’s definitely a bummer.
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