Hellgate: London Shutting Down on January 31

[azeroth192]

GameSpot has revealed that the folks still maintaining Hellgate: London, Namco Bandai, will be pulling the plug on the action-RPG on January 31. Until then, a monthly subscription fee is no longer required to play.

This recent announcement, while unfortunate, should surprise almost no one. In early July of this year, Flagship made "significant staff cuts," despite previously denying such claims. A few days later, the company closed its doors and lost ownership of both Hellgate: London and Mythos. Later, in a candid interview with 1UP, founder Bill Roper spoke about independent development and the months leading up to the company's demise, even admitting that the last paychecks made to the employees were from the board of directors' pockets. We're guessing the subscriber base for Hellgate wasn't too terribly large to begin with, but our condolences to anyone who was hanging on and hoping for the best.

Man to bad it was a game full of potential but was in the wrong hands i hope a good publisher picks this up and revamps it so they can relaunch it maybe some new features and such

[mmodev]

Here is the situation with this game, as I know it. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Flagship approached this game from an "artistic" view instead of a "business" view. This is a common mistake early developers do which usualy sets a path of doom for the company.


Flagship took out a loan with their IP (Intelectual Property) as collateral.

They were unable to pay back the loan and were about to lose their IP.

An investor came to bail them out, they would keep their jobs.

They did not like the investors terms and did not take the bailout.

They lost their IP to the bank.

THE SAME bailout investors purchased the IP that the bank took from Flagship.

[Tenebrous]

Originally Posted by azeroth192

Man to bad it was a game full of potential but was in the wrong hands i hope a good publisher picks this up and revamps it so they can relaunch it maybe some new features and such

I had waited for so long for this game to come out, but I think it was generally a disappointment to most who played, myself included. I agree that it had potential, but it was limited in far too many ways to really take off on a large scale. While I don't know the numbers regarding players and income, I don't foresee a "revival" of sorts being very successful. I personally say good riddance to the game and better luck next time to Flagship (if there is a next time).

[Mr. Hrm]

The executives at Flagship seemed pretty nice. It is to bad it ended so badly.

[krillin157]

hope they release a new revamped verison of this great online game.

[Mr. Hrm]

Originally Posted by krillin157

hope they release a new revamped verison of this great online game.

The new IP owners may! Who knows but we can hope so.

[ionscorp]

Terrible game down the hole... This is shocking!

[Mr. Hrm]

One of the main devs said they tried to bite off more than they could chew. To many features planned.

[mmodev]

An important bit of wisdom that many devs forget is that a game doesn't need to have every game mechanic and the kitchen sink to be fun!

Lets take the flash arcade on this site, as a small example.

There are many games on the arcade, 1532 played, as of posting this. Lets say that 1200 of those games are "real" and not just people testing out the game. The most popular games, as of now, are "Snake" and "X-Training", which are nothing but pixels! Or simple type graphics with fun, chalenging game mechanics.

In other words, polished game mechanics rock a game loaded with buggy mechanics.