Flagship Studios

Founding

In June 2003, Blizzard North executives Bill Roper, Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik emailed Blizzard Entertainment's then-parent company, Vivendi Games, threatening to resign unless provided financial protections and communication on Vivendi's intent to sell Blizzard. Vivendi accepted their resignations effective immediately, spurring them to found Flagship Studios and recruit similarly disgruntled Blizzard North employees.

History

In March 2005, following months of teasing concept art for an unknown game, Flagship Studios' first title named Hellgate: London was announced via an exclusive article in the computer magazine PC Gamer. It was formally released October 31, 2007 as an action role-playing game (RPG) in the same vein as the Diablo games, but with the twist of being played in 3D, primarily from a first-person perspective. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic demon-infested London, following a great battle between demons and humans. Unlike regular first-person shooters, the game features RPG content in the form of e.g. random quests, and where a character's combat efficiency is more determined by statistics than player reflexes. In addition, the game features random levels, uncommon in games of similar perspective and scale. The game received mixed reviews, and complaints by many gamers that the game was released in an unfinished state, which was later admitted by CEO Bill Roper. The company no longer owns the intellectual property rights to the game.

Original release

The developer Flagship Studios had proposed regular additions to Hellgate: London throughout the life of the game. In March 2008, it was announced that Comerica Bank would provide game funding assistance, using Hellgate: London as collateral, for Flagship Studios so that they would not "rely upon a publisher's investment" to support ongoing development of their games. "The Stonehenge Chronicles" update was scheduled for release on January 21, 2008 but was postponed until January 22, 2008 due to bugs. The last content patch developed by Flagship Studios was the "Abyss Chronicles". The original servers were shut down on February 1, 2009.

The company Ping0 managed the North American and European servers for Hellgate: London, while Infocomm Asian Holdings managed the Southeast Asia server. Players in the Southeast Asia region experienced server crashing issues. The publishing companies involved gave an official response after several requests from the community. Following the shutdown of Flagship Studios in August 2008 and the loss of its intellectual property rights, it was announced that Hellgate: London game servers would be shut down as of January 31, 2009. At 12:00 a.m. CST on February 1, 2009, the game server and website for the North American and European regions became inaccessible.

The following is an account of the North American and European subscription model Flagship Studios had while it was in effect: There were two types of multiplayer accounts: free and subscription accounts. Subscribers had access to ongoing content updates. The US subscription plan cost $9.95 a month and an offer to pay a one-time fee of $149.99 for a lifetime subscription was available for up to 100,000 people who pre-ordered the game and ended on January 31, 2008. The UK subscription is £6.99 and EU subscription is €9.99. Additionally, subscribers would have access to a Hardcore mode, special PvP arenas and a PvP ladder, the ability to bypass server queues, a shared storage space with room for 40 items instead of 20, the ability to create guilds, the ability to achieve officer status in guilds, and 24-hour customer support. Subscribers and non-subscribers were able to interact in all ways in the game. Non-subscribers could join guilds, but not create them. The level cap is set to 50 and up to 24 character slots are available for all players. As of July 2008, all subscriptions were suspended and players could neither subscribe nor unsubscribe at that point, although they were no longer billed. Since Flagship Studios went into receivership, the US & EU multiplayer ceased.

Due to problems with the subscription service, the Halloween holiday subscription content was made available to all players, both fee-paying and free-playing. In SEA, two weeks after the game was released, many players complained about a game patch, installed by Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH), which supposedly would have deleted player's characters since game launch. While the EU and US servers had received recent patches and additional content since launch, support and patching of the SEA server had been delayed. IAHGames, the distributor of Hellgate: London and the company providing the "Alliance" server for the SEA region, had promised patch 0 on launch day itself. However, Patch 0 was delayed with no official date of implementation. On November 14, a joint statement by the CEOs of IAHGames and Flagship Studios announced that the both Patch 0 and Patch 0.1 will be implemented on November 22 and that they are considering some compensation for the early adopters.

Relaunches

On November 3, 2008, South Korean-based software distributor Hanbitsoft announced via its global public relations blog, that it has acquired the Hellgate: London and Mythos properties from Flagship Studios. The post mentions development of an upcoming expansion, using leftover Flagship development efforts. Updates from company state the expansion pack includes new maps featuring Seoul and a product title, The Second Invasion. On November 12, 2009, HanbitSoft announced the re-development of Hellgate: London (authorized by the former Flagship Studio) had been completed. By July 2011, Hellgate: London multiplayer servers were relaunched using a free-to-play model. Hanbitsoft's redesigned game is live in South Korea, while the North American release has been only in beta testing.

In September 2014, Hellgate Global, which was announced to include the expansion Hellgate: Tokyo and the new Hell Mode difficulty level, was listed at Steam Greenlight by HanbitSoft-linked company Redbana Corporation. The project was approved by the Steam Community and Valve contacted Redbana Corporation for the possibility of hosting the game on Steam. However, in January 2016 the T3Fun/Redbana Hellgate Global service was shut down.