Flagship Studios goes the way of the dodo

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: KeithTalent

WTF indeed. It sounds as if they are suspending normal operations until this gets sorted out, or they get some sort of funding injection. I can't imagine they will be able to sustain themselves much longer, without someone buying them or at least finding an angel investor of some sort.

Certainly an interesting one to watch.

KT

You are probably really close if not correct. It almost sounds like they are trying to wipe themselves clean in order to make themselves seem more attractive to the next guy that wishes to buy/fund them. I guess the attractive idea would be for the investor to focus on the potential success of Mythos especially if a new team were hired. Not sure...

 

[Xavier434]

Oh boy...

Source

Bill Roper and Directors of Flagship Studios Bear Responsibility

- HanbitSoft making good progress in securing intellectual property rights for Hellgate: London
- HanbitSoft is preparing for a lawsuit against Bill Roper and the founding directors of Flagship Studios.

Last weekend, Flagship Studios announced that former employees were fired and HanbitSoft mentioned that all measures were proceeding as planned to the benefit of players (in Korea) to ensure that continued service of Hellgate: London would be seamless despite the current problems at its development studio. In addition, HanbitSoft holds the executives of Flagship Studios fully responsible for the incident towards the rights and interests of the users and stakeholders, including shareholders and other parties involved. HanbitSoft is considering taking strong legal action against Flagship Studios in order to take them to task for their responsibilities.

HanbitSoft does not expect to have any difficulty in securing the exclusive intellectual property rights related to Mythos. HanbitSoft is prepared to deal with Comerica bank in a local visit to them next week in order to secure and acquire the intellectual property rights of Hellgate: London. HanbitSoft believes that the game has nothing to do with the aforementioned bank as HanbitSoft already holds the rights to the game in Asia. HanbitSoft believes it has a strong possibility of acquiring the intellectual property of Hellgate: London in the United States and the rest of the world.

HanbitSoft stated that they will be devising a plan to continue work on the games with local (Korean) game developers in order to see the game through.

HanbitSoft?s CEO Kim Ki-Young stated, ?Hellgate: London has a strong possibility of being ?reborn? into an excellent game with an outstanding product life,? he continued to say that ?With more than 500 people at its disposal, both in-house and outsourced contracts who are veteran developers of every genre ranging from casual games to hardcore MMORPGs, we are ready to recreate Hellgate: London into an excellent game.?

He continued, ?We don?t have to recruit existing developers, however if we could do so, we could shorten the time for analysis and developing for users. Although we are trying our best, since Flagship Studios doesn?t want to cooperate, we have no choice.?

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.?

Flagship Studios is an incorporated company. Hence if any problems occur within this company, it doesn?t affect the finances of any of Flagship Studios? founders.

HanbitSoft said they are going to take legal proceedings as Flagship Studios is legally responsible for a serious breach of duty in not protecting their stockholder?s rights. The legal proceedings will be done against Flagship?s founders and management people for their intellectual property. HanbitSoft currently owns a 9.5% stake in Flagship Studios.

I got this from hellgateguru.com which got it from the source I linked above. I do not know how reliable it is but I thought you guys might be interested regardless.

 

[invidia]

This is what happens when they leave Blizzard.

Should of stayed and concentrated on D3. Which would of been been announced 3 years ago with a end of 2008 release.

 

[duragezic]

Mythos forums and servers are shutting down at midnight tonight.

 

[lupi]

Sounds like they are thoroughly getting their ass kicked.

 

[Chronoshock]

Man... the last three games I've beta tested (mythos, HG:L, and fury) all went bankrupt. I hope I'm not cursed.

 

[Fenixgoon]

man, sad to see things go so far south for FSS. a lot of fantastic ideas, but nowhere near the amount of execution on them that people were expecting

maybe i'll just run through HGL single player now. good thing i only picked it up for $20.

 

[Elcs]

I installed HGL the other day to test out my HD4870....

At this moment in time, HGL looks fantastic in DX10. I really think the Devs did a good job with this and ironed out a lot of the performance bugs in the game

I still love Hellgate London.....

But I found I hate it for all of the same reasons I put it down.

If the game was as polished performance-wise as it is now at release and they fixed those god-awful quest bugs/inventory problems/chat windows then the game could have been a world-beater.

Sadly... they met their end and one of three companies that make the best videos has gone (Blizzard, Relic, Flagship Studios) There can be no question over the quality of the intro and final movies