Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The greatest tragedy about the closure of Flagship last year – apart from a ton of good people losing their jobs, of course – was not the loss of dreary demon-basher Hellgate: London, but of the promising free-to-play Diablolike Mythos. Ditching the subscription fee was a dangerous experiment for Flagship, but Bill Roper and co never got to see if it worked. However, their sometime publisher Hannbitsoft managed to hang on to the license and tech upon Flagship’s demise, and they’ve just announced development has restarted. From a different studio, inevitably. How do we feel about this?
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The Hellgate situation appears to be descending further into Hell. Hellgate Guru have translated this story in the Korean press where their Hanbitsoft are terribly mean about partners-in-Hellgate Flagship. “Selfish”? “Irresponsible”? You wouldn’t be surprised if they went on to say they smelt bad too. The reason for the rancour is that they claim while they tried to find a deal to keep Flagship going, the founding-fathers preferred to just sack all the staff. They claim to be making good progress in getting the rights to Hellgate, and are preparing a lawsuit against the founding directors of Flagship. Our industry analyst thinks: Hanbitsoft must fancy Flagship. If they start pulling Flagship’s pigtails, we’ll know for sure.

We’re planning on giving our industry analyst the heave-ho, admittedly.

What on Earth’s going on with Flagship Studios? The short answer is it’s not entirely clear yet. But some newsmen are claiming that the creators of Hellgate: London, and the forthcoming Mythos, are shutting up shop, with the ownership and IP of both games transferring elsewhere. Blimey. How did it come to this?
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