Good news for Hellgate: London fans – it looks like you’re back in the game, at least until January 2009.  Hellgate: London, and the associated Flagship fiasco behind the game are quickly shaping up to be one of the great ‘WTF’ stories of the gaming world for 2008.

Let’s take a step back, and I’ll give you the $0.50 tour.  Basically, the saga shakes out like so:  back in June, Flagship Studio’s audio and gameplay programmer Guy Somberg wrote a length nine-paragraph blog article reporting that Flagship employees were leaving “in droves” including accountants, programmers, HR peeps, and game artists.  He continued on and noted that only one full time employee was still working on Hellgate: London, and that the game was still trodding on, even though the gaming committee had trashed the title, sighting that it was full of various bugs causing system slowdowns and complete crashes.  Shifting into damage control, Flagship Studios CVP David Brevik followed up the article, claiming that Somberg was “having a bad day” and that everything in Flagship land was sunny and bright.  The blog has since disappeared.

“Both our studios are currently fully staffed, with our San Francisco studio working on ongoing content for Hellgate: London and our Seattle studio working on our free-to-play MMORPG, Mythos, which should go into open beta within the next couple months,” said Brevik in his official statement. “In total, we have over 100 employees working for both studios. As is typical in the industry, after a game is released some people naturally want to work on something else and they leave the company to do so. But in total we have had less than 10% turn-over and have rehired for all needed positions.”

Shall I continue?

Basically the story takes a turn for the (even) worse, with CEO Bill Roper finally admitting that there was some truth to Somberg’s outcry on June 14th.  Instead of folks leaving in droves, it looks like they were forced to take an early vacation: they were canned by Roper and Co.

“The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer,” he said.

Now we all know that where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire, and sure enough, Flagship Studio’s smoky environment, sent some pretty clear signals to those that had a vested interest in both Hellgate: London, and Flagship’s free-to-play title: Mythos.  Korean based HanbitSoft, exclusive publisher of Hellgate: London and Mythos stepped into the foray and claimed that it intended to take over control of the titles.  Insert war of words here, including a juicy statement from HanbitSoft’s CEO Kim Ki-Young:

“Flagship not only lacked effort (in developing and maintaining Hellgate), but were only looking for personal gain. Firing all of the Flagship employees in order to protect the personal interests of its founding members only shows how selfish and irresponsible they are.”

Ouch.

As it turns out, HanbitSoft only has the rights to Mythos, and not Hellgate: London as well.

While this ensuing war of the words was taking place, Hellgate: London forums lit up like the 4th of July with everything ranging from wild speculation, to downright close to the truth.  Namco Bandai had been seen as a potential supporter of the Hellgate: London title, and this past Friday, they finally confirmed a number of rumors:

“[Namco] will continue to support customers of PC game Hellgate: London with online server support and play through January 31, 2009 despite the closure of Flagship Studios.”
“In a further gesture of support, Namco Bandai Games will provide this server support free of charge to all fans and players of the game up until the shut down date. NAMCO BANDAI Games appreciates the enthusiasm of all the Hellgate: London players and looks forward to providing them with future entertainment products.”

Phew.  What a tennis match of following he said/she said.

Which leaves us with one very crucial piece of the Flagship Studios puzzle: Mythos.  Mythos lead designer, Travis Baldree and Flagship Studios co-founder Max Schaefer didn’t take the collapse of Flagship sitting down, but rather, founded Runic Games.  The site was last updated on August 8th, 2008, and mentions Mythos, but gives no concrete details.  I’m going to take a guess, and say that the name may be well mired up in copyright issues and that we may never see this free-to-play see the light of day.  Again, only speculation.  On the other hand, if Baldree and Schaefer are as committed as they seem to be in Baldree’s WarCry interview, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of elements of Mythos incorporated in a new free-to-play premiered as Runic Games’ coming out party title.

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