Mythos on Hold, Flagship's Future Uncertain

Article by Kevin Parrish

Following rumors that the developer was shutting down, Flagship Studios announced massive layoffs and put its upcoming RPG Mythos on hold. Now the company is battling its creditors for the Mythos and Hellgate: London intellectual properties.

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/0 [...] ip_mythos/

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robwright wrote :

Article by Kevin Parrish

Following rumors that the developer was shutting down, Flagship Studios announced massive layoffs and put its upcoming RPG Mythos on hold. Now the company is battling its creditors for the Mythos and Hellgate: London intellectual properties.

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/0 [...] ip_mythos/

And another one bites the dust...

Shame, as Hellgate : London could of been good, online updatable payable content seems the way that game companies will survive, but as this was rushed out buggy then its an insult even to contain the name London in it..

Oh well, looks like Steam is our only hope.....

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Reply to Hellboy

Hellboy wrote :

And another one bites the dust...

Shame, as Hellgate : London could of been good, online updatable payable content seems the way that game companies will survive, but as this was rushed out buggy then its an insult even to contain the name London in it..

Oh well, looks like Steam is our only hope.....

Dang, i did liked Hellgate, it just needed a lot of fixing. Whos next ? Adventurine ? pffff..........

------------------------------ Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read - Frank Zappa
Reply to radnor

Yea i also was disappointed in hellgate, but I still bought at as did about 15 of my friends. I was under the impression that hellgate did pretty well sales wise for a while. I was suprised to hear the original story about how bad it was going over that flagship. I knew the game was going kinda shaky, but unaware that the company was resting on it. Its really to bad as the game had so much potential. I wish the dev members best on future endeavors.

Best,

3Ball

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Reply to 3Ball

3Ball wrote :

Yea i also was disappointed in hellgate, but I still bought at as did about 15 of my friends. I was under the impression that hellgate did pretty well sales wise for a while. I was suprised to hear the original story about how bad it was going over that flagship. I knew the game was going kinda shaky, but unaware that the company was resting on it. Its really to bad as the game had so much potential. I wish the dev members best on future endeavors.

Best,

3Ball

Like Diablo III, i hope they ride that way for two reasons:

1 - Historicly
2 - More devs, less time to develop !!!!

Talking about D3, im gonna get my Tinfoil Hat. And start running naked here at the office, or...not,

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------------------------------ Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read - Frank Zappa
Reply to radnor

radnor wrote :

Like Diablo III, i hope they ride that way for two reasons:

1 - Historicly
2 - More devs, less time to develop !!!!

Talking about D3, im gonna get my Tinfoil Hat. And start running naked here at the office, or...not,

Sounds good to me man...well maybe not the last part! lol, I dont know what I would do if one of the other techs did that here... lol

Best,

3Ball

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Intel C2Q Q9550 @ 3.40ghz w/ (8.5x400mhz, 1.2125v, Zalman 9500 & 24+ Hours Prime95 Stable)
6gb G. Skill DDR2 6400 @ 800mhz w/ (5-5-5-15: 2T, 2.04v)
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Reply to 3Ball

3Ball wrote :

Sounds good to me man...well maybe not the last part! lol, I dont know what I would do if one of the other techs did that here... lol

Best,

3Ball

But the idea was that they made money on subscriptions...

Sell a game for 50-60 dollars and make 20 dollars a month subscription

over a year obviously 240 dollars.... So no one plays it after 3 months loss of 180 dollars revenue in its first year..

Now this was down a non sustainable budget for which the game had to be rushed out therefore loosing the playability testing it needed so badly...

End result company looses credibility and money that it is in the same AMD waters...

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Message edited by Hellboy on 07-22-2008 at 10:18:46 PM

Reply to Hellboy

Here's a positive update. The Hellgate forums did not go offline after all, and now it seems that Namco Bandai is involved with keeping the service afloat (link). Here's their announcment on the forum:

Quote :

Hello Hellgaters,

I know everyone is looking for an announcement, and we'd love to make one -- but right now, many things are in flux and we don't have all the information yet. As soon as we do, we'll post here on the forums, on the website, and anywhere else we can find you.

In the short term, please do not worry. The game is up, the servers are not going away in the short term and any major changes to status will be communicated in advance.

I'd like to ask for your patience as we try to figure it all out and chart a new course. We value your community, your commitment, and your passion for Hellgate and we will make sure that any solution that we architect will support all of you as best as we are able.

Thanks again. We hope to have a real announcement shortly.
__________________
Zack "Ozuri" Karlsson
Sr. Director, Business Development
NAMCO BANDAI Games America, Inc.

------------------------------ Kevin Parrish
Contributing Editor / Official Chicken Clucker Tester
Tom's Hardware / Tom's Guide

http://card.mygamercard.net/gbar/abyss/magikahn.gif

Reply to exfileme

Hellboy wrote :

But the idea was that they made money on subscriptions...

Sell a game for 50-60 dollars and make 20 dollars a month subscription

over a year obviously 240 dollars.... So no one plays it after 3 months loss of 180 dollars revenue in its first year..

Now this was down a non sustainable budget for which the game had to be rushed out therefore loosing the playability testing it needed so badly...

End result company looses credibility and money that it is in the same AMD waters...

I don't think hellgate was designed with subscriptions totally in mind, as you can experience 75%+ of the games' content without a subscription. I think the problem likely had a great deal more to do with Electronic Arts skimming off way too much of their gross profits and not leaving enough to keep their online service paid for in addition to their staff. Anyways, the subscription for hellgate was like 10$ a month if I recall correctly; but yea.

Anyways, I think that ultimately they just didn't realize how much cost there was associated with the game, and EA likely pushed it to market before it was complete. This happens a great deal with big publishers like EA and THQ - so it wouldn't surprise me if the same happened here.

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Reply to ovaltineplease

ovaltineplease wrote :

Anyways, I think that ultimately they just didn't realize how much cost there was associated with the game, and EA likely pushed it to market before it was complete. This happens a great deal with big publishers like EA and THQ - so it wouldn't surprise me if the same happened here.

Yeah, that's my guess too. They should have taken 3 or 6 more months to fix the bugs before release. The effort of 5 years wasted because they couldn't make it 5.5 years... This is sad.

My best wishes to the developers. I'm sure this is not their fault. Maybe Blizzard can hire most of them and deliver Diablo 3 faster...

It also didn't help them at all that they released at a time when the 8800GTX was king of the hill and its drivers were garbage. I built my current PC for Hellgate last year, and I had to deal with crashes caused by Hellgate itself as well as those caused by nVidia. That was really bad luck.

Message edited by aevm on 07-24-2008 at 03:41:33 AM

Reply to aevm

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