nullword

When Hellgate: London finished beta, the forums where full of beta testers trying to tell the company that the game was not ready, and post by fanboys screaming it was the best game ever and a miracle patch was coming. Well, Hellgate: London launched and was ripped apart by most critics and the majority of the fans. I was very sad because I saw it coming, and nothing was done.

Now Gamasutra is reporting that Flagship Studios the company made up of mostly ex-Blzzard North developers is having some major problems. It starts with rumors of layoffs and has moved to this:

Gamasutra has received confirmation from a Flagship Studios representative that the Hellgate: London developer has seen significant staff cuts.

This morning, Gamasutra obtained information from a source close to the company indicating that staff at both the Flagship development team as well as online services subsidiary Ping0 were let go. Both companies operate out of the same building.

Flagship declined to go into further detail about the layoffs, beyond stating that there was truth to the reports.

Hellgate: London was released last October to favorable-skewing reviews, but was plagued by notorious launch issues and certain major gameplay criticisms. The company’s core founders were comprised of former Blizzard North developers responsible for the Diablo games, and Hellgate was intended as a spiritual successor to those titles.

The news comes despite claims by co-publisher Electronic Arts that Hellgatehas over one million active subscribers - being particularly successful in Korea. 

In a statement last month, Flagship intended to reassure fans of the company’s health despite worries generated by a post on CVO David Brevik’s blog. 

“All our Directors and Founders are still working at Flagship, and all of them are working on Hellgate: London or Mythos,” read the statement. “The team size for Hellgate is as big now as when we shipped.”

A second source close to Flagship indicated to Gamasutra that even at the time of such outward confidence, the company was going through internal turbulence.

[UPDATE: Fan site Hellgate Guru has translated a Korean news reportindicating that Hellgate: London's publisher in the region, HanbitSoft, "...is taking full control over the Hellgate: London intellectual property from Flagship Studios," and intends to continue the game using in-house staff.

However, Flagship has officially responded: "This story is an outright lie. We have no idea where they are getting their information from and have asked legal counsel to pursue the issue... We are mystified by Hanbitsoft’s conclusions and any attempt to take over the IP will be met with a strong and swift response."]

Poor Flagship. I can’t feel that bad though, as they had plenty of warning.