Hellgate Developer Cuts Staff, Denies Korean Take-over
Flagship Studios, developer of the MMO Hellgate: Londonhas confirmed job cuts, with reports claiming an extensive number of layoffs on the Hellgate development team and online services subsidiary Ping0. After word of the cuts leaked, the Korean press reported that the publisher of the game in that region, HanbitSoft, was taking over the operation of the game in all regions, according to fansite Hellgate Guru.
Shortly after that, Flagship denied that it had lost the property, saying:
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.
A representative of Hanbitsoft then contacted Hellgate Guru, where the quote originated, and asked that they take down the story as it is incorrect. That person also clarified the situation:
Please understand that the facts are (1) HanbitSoft is an exclusive licensee of both Hellgate and Mythos in Asia, with rights to sublicense the games; (2) in addition, HanbitSoft is a secured creditor who has been pledged the Mythos (but not the Hellgate) intellectual property as collateral for a loan; (3) Comerica, another secured lender, has been pledged the Hellgate intellectual property as its collateral for a loan; (4) Flagship Studios does not currently own the intellectual properties to either game, which are held in separate companies subject to the security interests of lenders, and Flagship Studios' interest in those companies is also pledged to its lenders; (5) it is unfortunate that Flagship turned down additional investments HanbitSoft offered to make that would have allowed it to keep its doors open, but HanbitSoft hopes to work with Comerica and some of the team at Flagship to see if there is a way to continue to generate content to keep Hellgate online in Asia and to finish the development of Mythos.
That's basically where things stand now. We'll have to wait and see what happens in the end, and exactly how further development of Hellgate and the upcoming Mythos will be affected. Although the game never took off in North America or other territories, they recently crowed about their success in Korea, so hopefully all companies involved will be able to get things back on track before too long, and those laid-off will move on to new companies without too much trouble.
Layoffs confirmed at Hellgate developer Flagship [Gamasutra]
Dawdle
Posted to Video Games on 12 July 2008
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: business, flagship studios, hanbitsoft, hellgate london, layoffs, legal tanglings
Sad to hear people lose their jobs. While I do think that FSS had their hearts in the right place, their launch was so bad for me I couldn't really get into Hellgate at all. I don't think they could really recover from it.