Flagship Sunk, Who's In Charge of Hellgate? Word started passing yesterday that Flagship Studios went caput, and now multiple sites are reporting that the Hellgate developer is indeed no more. We got an anonymous tipster who said Flagship shut down abruptly yesterday, and that developers for both Hellgate (San Francisco) and Mythos (Seattle) have all been pink-slipped. "But there's also hope that they will all have their jobs back at the end of next week at a brand new company," our tipster says. But wait, there's more. Flagship's Korean partners/owners, Hanbitsoft, were said to be taking over. That sparked a foofaraw regarding who owns the Hellgate intellectual property. Fan site Hellgate Guru first reported that HanbitSoft was taking full control of Hellgate: London and intended to continue the game. That brought a forceful denial from Flagship, and confirmation from HanbitSoft's own attorneys (who slipped in a backhanded dig at the failing studio, which pretty much confirms Flagship's demise.) HanbitSoft's attorneys said that while they're an exclusive licensee of Hellgate and Mythos, it's been pledged only the Mythos IP. Secured lender Comerica gets the Hellgate IP as collateral on the loan. Either way, Flagship does not own either, and also: That sounds like the "brand new company" possibility our tipster mentioned. Either way, HanbitSoft says it threw Flagship a lifeboat, and it chose to go to the bottom. Ouch. Finally, VE3D says it got more confirmation early this morning: Our source says an official announcement will come next week (like what, at E3?) Kotaku Voodoo Extreme
It looked like it could have been good, but once I played the demo I decided not to buy it. Apparently, I wasn't the only one. : P
Sounds like Blizz knew this was going to happen and maybe thats why they dropped the D3 bomb... lol Either way, it is good marketing for D3 now.
Thread title is misleading. Flagship is the company who developed the Zelda Oracle series. Flagship Studios is the Blizzard related one.