Some of you might have followed the short ascent and the slow downfall of Hellgate: London. A heavily criticized game design, major bugs at release and a poor payment model turned a once promising game to a good candidate for the “This is how you shouldn’t do it!” handbook.
After Flagship Studios laid off the majority of their employees the final death blow seems to have been dealt with the announcement of the final closure of the Hellgate: London servers in the end of January 2009.
After some IP (Intellectual Property) skirmish between the remnants of Flagship and HanbitSoft, the Asian publisher, the latter claimed the IP rights and the publishing rights for Asia while the publishing rights for the EU and U.S. remain at the former co-publisher Namco/Bandai.
Now close to the planned shutdown of the servers, HanbitSoft has announced their plans to re-launch Hellgate: London as free to play without giving specific information as to whether this also includes the non-Asian territories. Further, Hanbit has announced that they will continue the development of Hellgate: London with the focus on strengthening its community features. It is doubtful that the EU and U.S. will benefit from this as there yet has to be made an announcement regarding a possible cooperation between Hanbit and Namco/Bandai.
Though it is good to see the game remain available for its fans, this whole story leaves an acrid taste. With all this mess happening in the past months, starting with a highly premature release and followed by the skirmish between Flagship and Hanbit, leaving the fans in the dark about the future of their beloved game, I can hardly imagine that Hellgate: London will be afloat again, at least not in the EU or U.S.
