Flagship Studios - Not Dead Yet...

Dhruin

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Flagship has posted an announcement on their forums, saying that while most staff were laid off, the founders remain and they still have control of both IPs (presumably as long as they can find a way to service their loans):
Flagship Studios Still in Operations

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.
Thanks, Kris!
More information.
 
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They are not taking subscriptions and not billing the customers they have, why? Is the MP unstable or something because they can't properly service it, or why is that?
 
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They are not taking subscriptions and not billing the customers they have, why? Is the MP unstable or something because they can't properly service it, or why is that?

What Ive read from the boards its obvious that they dont know anything about future. Until they are sure that the game keeps going on they wont take the risk to bill customers.

Funny thing is new players seem to pour in everyday. They are just confused why they cant subscribe. Hopefully the situation will clear up soon - othervise they might loose lots of customers.
 
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This sounds a lot like the situation at Interplay. How even though there was only one guy left who made mistake after mistake. Yet he is still around (gods only know how he survived this far) But it sounds like that kind of deal. They will have to bargain away some of Flagships IPs away to pay off bills to keep their company. To my knowledge Flagship just made Hellgate London, could be wrong about that, but if it is then it is exactly like the interplay fiasco when all they had left was Fallout. So to survive they sold Fallout to the Devil so they could stay afloat (well techincally they sold all of Fallout except the MMO rights)

My point being here, you had one great company that had a huge reputation (Gamers by Gamers as the slogan goes) and they were brought to their knees with stupid idiotic mistakes a fifth grader could of told them that they would sell badly and hurt them in the end. Now you have this other new company formed by some great names in the biz (if you liked Diablo) and they made some idiot mistakes and now they are in the same boat.

The moral here my friends is if your going to make a game you believe in and love then lock yourself up in a bunker (ala Cleve) don't take any phone calls from suits telling you how you should make it better. Don't get on the net and read all the millions of pages on how other people think you should make your game. Just sit down and stick with what you wanted to make. Finish it and release it when your sure its done. Of course this scenerio only works if you self funded. If the publisher has got you by the balls then there isn't much you can do other than what they tell you to do.

Just some ramblings from a mad man for you to think on.
 
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Travis Baldree offers a Fond Farewell but implies Mythos is not quite dead and his team still exists in some form.
 
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For me, this announcement reads as "Not Dead, But Dying Regardless".
 
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Agree, and also agree with skavenhorde, though Interplay had a few years more of success and great games before biting the dust. FS may hang on a bit longer, but where is any rescue going to come from? The economic climate right now isn't exactly one that makes investors keen on risking a lot of capitol in any less-than-sure venture, and bailing out a failing company that's neck-deep in debt with mortgaged IPs doesn't sound very appetizing.
 
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Travis Baldree offers a Fond Farewell but implies Mythos is not quite dead and his team still exists in some form.

Yeah, that thread (if it was the one I was reading last night) made me quite sad. Regardless of what one might think of either game, the mods and devs working on them were top-notch people. I wish them well.
 
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The operative word in "not dead yet" is the "yet".

Not yet but soon, soon my darlings.
 
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Its good to know that its not dead because there are many people who do like it even though it doesnt seem to be a game for mainstream's taste. I hope the game will keep going on so that the ones that do like it can continue to play it.

Most likely it will survive though - there are mmogs that have had even smaller niches and still survived for many many years. In example ww2ol subscriber base is only 10,000 but it has survived for 7 years now while developing new content all that time.

One future idea ive seen is that they should dump the subscription & seperate singleplayer game (+patches) and just bill for the addons like guild wars. They could use the not-yet-released 2.0 to put hellgate 2.0 edition into retail. Founders would get all addons free naturally.
 
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Looks like it may develop into something nasty.

According to HanbitSoft, they offered several methods and the means to keep Flagship alive in consideration of the users, but Flagship majorly lacked in effort. Hanbitsoft already has offered large amounts of investments but Flagship replied with ridiculous counter-offers and the negotiations went south. Even so, HanbitSoft continued to make investment offers which were all rejected, leading to the lay-offs of all of the Flagship employees.

HanbitSoft also stated, “Flagship not only lacked effort, 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.”

Sounds like it would be good for hellgate to get rid of flagship. What a bunch of missmanagers.

From the comments:

I am sure this news was written with evil intent in order to make Bill Roper and the founders look evil. I don't believe in it until hearing their side of it. As far as I "know" these guys - following them for like 10 years - they are not selfish.
This could of course be biased since HanbitSoft is talking, but I do agree with them on the part of FSS firing most of their staff to hold tight to their IP. I don't see much good coming from that, to be honest. They don't have the staff left to support the game. Then I'd rather see them hand it to HanbitSoft, who have a large crew of developers.
 
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Hellgate London Forums - Shutting Down

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On Friday, July 18th at Midnight (CST) the forums will be shutting down. We would like to thank everyone for being a part of this wonderful community and we hope to see you all again soon.
 
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Whoa buddy. Sounds like the 'not dead' aspect was highly overstated.
 
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Soon ? Where ?
 
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Hellgate London Forums - Shutting Down

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On Friday, July 18th at Midnight (CST) the forums will be shutting down. We would like to thank everyone for being a part of this wonderful community and we hope to see you all again soon.

They stay up:

Looks kinda like it was Tiggs' call all along:

http://forums.hellgatelondon.com/showpost....p;postcount=631
(Tiggs)
So, I have a question... if I leave the forums up so you guys can have interaction and communication will you please stay within the forum guidelines.

So the only reason she was going to take it down in the first place was all the trolling and flaming; but the news that they would be taking the forums down only made it even worse. Then she decides to just leave it all up...
 
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