Flagship Studios Still in Operation...Sorta

[Shayalyn]

The Little Guys Always Get Shafted...

Folks have been wondering about the status of Flagship Studios, developers of Hellgate London and Mythos. We covered the story as it developed, and reported Flagship Studios' demise.

Today the following appeared on the Hellgate London forums, claiming that the rumors of Flagship Studios' demise were greatly exaggerated. Okay, a little exaggerated.

San Francisco, CA (July 14, 2008) -- Flagship Studios has announced today that despite rumors to the contrary, the company is still operating.

“It is with deep regret that I must announce that Flagship Studios has laid off most employees. However, the core management and founding team members are still at Flagship.” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer.”

Flagship Studios owns the rights to all its technology and IP, including Hellgate: London and Mythos. Due to the current situation, Flagship will not be taking any new subscribers for Hellgate: London, and all current subscriptions will not be billed.

Flagship wishes to extend their heartfelt thanks to those that have supported the company and games over the past five years.

So, Flagship Studios still exists, and the "core management" team remains.

Alas, the press release doesn't really answer any questions about the status of Hellgate: London or Mythos.

[Ralsu]

I just read the carbon copy of this post over on the Mythos forums. I am very worried about the future of that game even though Flagship Studios retained rights to it.

[Barbarious]

This will be a growing dilemma for this industry.

The MMOG industry has been expanding in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years and will only continue, fueled by the insanity that was World of Warcraft.

Yet the player base can only be divided profitably by so many games before certain games are no longer in the green each month. Having that fact made - I think we will begin to see more companies not making scratch after their long-invested MMO tribulations.

The question will then arise - what becomes of these games after the fact?

Hellgate: London will actually dodge the blow because their game has a single-player function in the event that they do close-shop.

However games like WoW where there is no single player available will be drawn into quite the complication.

Especially if the game was released and closed within a shorter time-frame.

Think:

Launch! Woohoo
3 Months Passes
We're broke! Sorry!

I feel a riot coming on.

[Sardu]

Originally Posted by Ralsu

I just read the carbon copy of this post over on the Mythos forums. I am very worried about the future of that game even though Flagship Studios retained rights to it.

Same here - I'm glad to hear that Flagship does still hold the rights, but at the same time with no real staff to continue development I have to wonder if we'll ever really see a launch-version Mythos. It has a lot of potential that I hope someday a larger audience will be able to experience.

[Kralle]

Originally Posted by Sardu

Same here - I'm glad to hear that Flagship does still hold the rights, but at the same time with no real staff to continue development I have to wonder if we'll ever really see a launch-version Mythos. It has a lot of potential that I hope someday a larger audience will be able to experience.

it would be a shame if all the effort put into this game would go down the drain.

Well, lets wait...hope and see

[Annatar]

The right to make lunch is most probably the only thing they managed to retain.