One Month Later, How Well is Hellgate: London Selling in Japan?

• July
• 22

Posted by Phil Hoper 3:22 am            Game: Hellgate London

A month ago, Flagship Studios issued an announcement that the recently made available for purchase (zoned for Japan) version of Hellgate: London was the number one selling PC Game in Japan. This according to Amazon.co.jp’s weekly continent sale reporting. This achievement was met with great cries of fanboy joy.

One month later, the achievement of being number 1 continues to be brought up in discussions. Mentioned as much as it is, I’ve yet to see anyone talk about HGL’s sales position on week two, three or where we’re at now, week four.

Below are Amazon.co.jp’s top PC game sales in Japan for the past four weeks, made available by Gamasutra.

June 26, 2008
1. Hellgate: London (EA Games), 2. Lineage: The Cross Rancor (E-Frontier), 3. Ragnarok Online Summer Package 2008 (E-Frontier), 4. Final Fantasy XI: Vana’diel Collection (Square Enix), 5. The Sims 2: Ikea Home Pack (EA Games).

July 3, 2008
1. Monster Hunter Frontier Online Season 3.0 Premium (E-Frontier), 2. Lineage: The Cross Rancor (E-Frontier), 3. Ragnarok Online Summer Package 2008 (E-Frontier), 4. Hellgate: London (EA Games), 5. Final Fantasy XI: Vana’diel Collection (Square Enix).

July 10, 2008
1. Monster Hunter Frontier Online Season 3.0 Premium (E-Frontier), 2. Lineage: The Cross Rancor (E-Frontier), 3. Ragnarok Online Summer Package 2008 (E-Frontier), 4. Final Fantasy XI: Vana’diel Collection (Square Enix), 5. Hellgate: London (EA Games).

July 17, 2008
1. Monster Hunter Frontier Online Season 3.0 Premium (E-Frontier), 2. Ragnarok Online Summer Package 2008 (E-Frontier), 3. Lineage: The Cross Rancor (E-Frontier), 4. Sukatto Golf Pangya: Yokubari Kit (E Frontier), 5. Final Fantasy XI: Vana’diel Collection (Square Enix). (Where’d Hellgate Go?)

So, there you have it. Less than two weeks after launch, HGL went from first to fourth. After week three, it had dropped off the list all together.

While some may say sales peaked and rapidly declined as anyone who was interested in HGL had purchased within the first few weeks. Money made, success! First consider the PC Gaming Market in Japan is very small compared to the Americas, Europe and most of Asia. Even reaching number one the first week isn’t the same number of sales and profit returns as it would be in most other countries.

Very possibly a large contributing factor to this quick decline is word getting out among Japanese players that the game lacks content and (as a unique problem for Japanese HGL Players) response times are greatly delayed, since they have no localized servers and must connect to the North American ones.`Looks like Operation Middle Finger’s mission in Japan is turning out as I predicted a month ago.

  

“News will be coming soon”

• July
• 21

Posted by Agamemnon 4:43 pm            Game: Hellgate London

By the way, did I quote that correctly, Ivan? Send me your complaints via E-Mail if I didn’t.

Anyways, Tiggs has posted another bit of information regarding the current upheaval everyone is in about the state of the game. Here’s a link to her post in the lolcat spam thread.

“Since word spreads fast around here and this thread needs a boost I can tell you this much… news will be coming soon for you folks. The game isn’t going anywhere at the end of the month like the speculation has it nor is the forums. So you are stuck with Hellgate and the forums for a while That is all I can answer for now but I wanted to let you know you can focus on playing and not worrying.”

Interesting how she doesn’t mention how the company will be fine. Of course, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the company isn’t fine; you don’t lay off everyone but the founding members and expect to continue on. But hey, if you’re still denying that, then I think you might want to look in to taking over this guy’s job:

“The Flagshipped.com press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies!”

Update: 07/22/2008 AM EST (by Phil) Looks like the above post has been given its own thread in the announcement forum. Based on many of the replies made to Tiggs’s message, within the HGL Forums, a good deal of trust has been lost with many players. This is far from surprising when taking into account the news and actions of FSS over the past few days. You can’t very well fault players for being overly skeptical about the future of the game and steadfastness of decisions chosen by this stripped down company.

  

Pissing away the money….and time

• July
• 21

Posted by Gapes 4:24 pm            Game: Hellgate London

Add this to the list of poor money and time management HGL received. It turns about according to a post by FSS10 they were actually were starting to develop HGL for the Xbox 360.

I‘m not joking this time.

There was a semi-working version running on a Xbox 360. Run, jump, shoot, monsters, etc. Sure it was an old build by about a year but it did work (It had the crappy ORANGE inventory UI and the cool health and power meter in the top left.) It came in very very late and it needed a whole new dev team to make it. It might have been cool.

Why? The time and money spent on working on a 360 version of HGL could have been used for things like….more content? But when you’re blowing your money away on a custom engine, and Weta figures and god knows what else a independent developer shouldn’t be doing….why not blow some more on something that you never really intended to create.

  

Bon voyage Mythos; Hellgate is now only a fathom away

• July
• 19

Posted by Agamemnon 2:06 am            Game: Hellgate London

Mythos servers (and forums) are now officially down. Again, you guys know as much as we do about the final word on everything. Keep us posted if anyone changes their mind at the last minute.

“Travelers of Uld,

We, the ancient elders of Uld are issuing this warning to all citizens and travelers. Hurry! The great darkness that once plagued Uld is returning. Everyone is ordered to close down their shops and prepare. We predict the when night is at its peak the darkness will arrive. The ancient elders of Uld will be leaving immediately in order to preserve the lore of this wonderful world. Citizens please prepare thyself and know that the elders will be back from their travels some day.

From the team:

We regretfully announce that on Friday, July 18, 2008 at 11:59 PST the world of Uld known as Mythos will be going on hiatus. On behalf of all of the Devs and Community team we want to say thank you to everyone for their support and assistance with Mythos Alpha and Beta testing and we will see you soon.

The Mythos Team”

Link

  

Forums are not going down tonight

• July
• 19

Posted by Agamemnon 12:08 am            Game: Hellgate London

Well it looks like Tiggs has changed her mind. The Hellgate forums are not coming down tonight. No word why. No word on anything else either. The Mythos servers won’t be coming down for another two hours, however. Let us know if anyone else would like to change their mind about anything else regarding Flagship Studios; maybe they are still claiming the IP rights belong to them? You never know.

  

RIP Mythos: Mythos Beta Going on “Hiatus”

• July
• 18

Posted by Phil Hoper 4:23 pm            Game: Mythos

From a post made by the former community manager Tiggs, on the Official Mythos Forum, word has been given that the Diablo Clone know as Mythos will shutting down today at 11:59 PM CST.

Mythos Beta Going on Hiatus

Bonus Link: Mythos Farewells and Well Wishes Message Thread

“Mythos was not the reason Flagship laid everyone off. We cannot afford to pay moderators and customer service people (like Tiggs and her Minions). In fact, we’ve all been on here doing this for free FYI. The forums are one of many faces of the company, and if it were left to the wolves it would become infested with spam and advertisements. We can’t allow that, so the boards have to come down. The Mythos Team” –Taylor Babli

As usual it’s the players fault, all of those vicious wolves in paying player clothing pretending to be innocent consumers! Just waiting to shed their skin soon as they get the chance to ruin a good forum with spam and ads. Can’t let you players have anything important, you’ll just ruin it and hurt yourselves without FSS to keep you safe. Thanks FSS for saving us from ourselves!

With all this alluding to being still in business despite all the staff but directors left go and now with this report of Mythos closing, full of cutesy roleplay to soften the fail it my be, it even is hinting at a return… “Citizens please prepare thyself and know that the elders will be back from their travels some day.” Something, one bright, slim, chance of hope must exist for FSS to salvage, repair and return Mythos and Hellgate to the market.

Could this hope be that new company being talked of which will arise from the ashes of Flagship Studios?

Special thanks to Kevin for quickly reporting the existence of this announcement. Thanks Kevin!

  

Hellgate forums are going down

• July
• 17

Posted by Agamemnon 9:25 pm            Game: Hellgate London

Link.

On Friday, July 18th at 11:59PM (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.

-Tiggs

Well I guess that would explain why people have been reporting their temp bans have turned into perma bans. It won’t matter any more when Friday night rolls around. No mention of what will be happening to the game or the company itself.

EDIT: Forgot to check if it was the same for the Mythos forums. The answer is yes.

EDIT: Tiggs clarified the time. It is not tonight, it is tomorrow.

UPDATE: (Phil) (July 18,11:30 PM EST) According to a post by Tiggs on the Official Hellgate: London Forums, HGL Forums will not be going down tonight. Also all the message bases have returned. Just don’t get too excited. No word if they are being turned off tomorrow or weeks/months/years from now.

As for Mythos, currently nothing has been announced to change. If I had to guess why HGL was spared, tonight, I’d put my money on, when you’re not being paid to work you’d rather not stay up all night dealing with two forum take-downs, back to back. (now that I see all the areas have returned) is someone(s) at FSS/Ping0 care enough to keep it up for a few days to let players/site save all the great information only available from that site. Well done FSS!

  

Strap yourselves in boys and girls…

• July
• 17

Posted by Agamemnon 12:17 am            Game: Hellgate London

HGG has picked up on an article from thisisgame.com, a Korean news site. I’ll just let it do the talking.

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.

…It’s going to be a bumpy ride these next few weeks.

  

The boat is still afloat

• July
• 15

Posted by Agamemnon 8:21 pm            Game: Hellgate London

Well, after four days of the silent treatment, we finally have an official response:

—

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.

—

Well I don’t know how much more vague it can get. Besides confirming the layoffs and telling us that the subscription options are being removed altogether (Sound familiar, SEA?), there is still no mention on HanbitSoft’s claims, or what’s in store of the future of the game, for that matter. Not even a heart-felt, “We will continue on.” If anything this almost sounds like a farewell letter.

What remains even more interesting is how this “tipster” confirmed to numerous media sources that the ENTIRE company was shutting down. I don’t know much about those media websites, but as I’ve seen it play out in the past, most of it seems to end up being true (or they’ll say, “from a confirmed inside source,” like as if it’s reliable). Perhaps the biggest question is why did it take them four days to announce the company is still in operations? Did they not see everyone leaving on their forums or how much of a disaster area it was? There goes the whole “hype up 2.0 to get people to subscribe” theory.

Yes indeed folks, the boat is still afloat, but they let the water come in for four days before they plugged the hole. How much longer can she take, Captain?

  

Flagship has been flagshipped?

• July
• 11

Posted by Agamemnon 2:43 pm            Game: Hellgate London

Well things have been hitting the fan quite a bit today. It all started from a news post from TheGames.co.kr, followed by HellgateGuru making a news post about the news. Here was the original story from HellgateGuru:

“In breaking news, Korean news website TheGames.co.kr reports that HanbitSoft is taking full control over the Hellgate: London intellectual property from Flagship Studios. At present, HanbitSoft co-owns the IP, which was developed by Flagship Studios and published by Electronic Arts in Europe and the United States.

HanbitSoft states that the reason it is pursuing this course of action is because “It is hard for us to accept Flagship Studios’ requests for continued support in capital and funding any longer and because Flagship was being difficult”, and because it co-owns a direct stake in the IP, it therefore “has a say in reviewing and determining any course of action to be taken with Hellgate: London.”

HanbitSoft is expected to take full control over the IP. HanbitSoft goes on to state that in doing so, it will be able to “properly manage and develop Hellgate: London into a good game with proper content”, with its own in-house team of developers.

The report further states that the online service of Hellgate: London, which started in January 15, 2008 acquired 100,000 early users within the first two weeks of operation during which time HanbitSoft earned 3 billion won (approximately 3 million USD) for the sales of Hellgate: London in Korea. However, the number of players in the game significantly declined due to the lack of general out-of-the-box content and the sparsity of ongoing content updates. Since its Open Beta launch, Hellgate: London has gone from being the 9th most played game in Korea to 52nd post-commercial launch. (Source)

It’s anyone’s guess at this point as to what will happen to the Hellgate: London development team at Flagship Studios in San Francisco and how this will affect the development of Mythos, Flagship’s other game.

Source: TheGames.co.kr“

As you can imagine, more than a few feathers have been ruffled over the news. Following the news post on HGG, a representative from Flagship Studios E-Mailed HGG with this response:

“UPDATE: Flagship Studios has sent Hellgate Guru an official response via e-mail with regards to the story:

This story is an outright lie. We have no idea where they are getting their information from and have asked legal counsel to pursue the issue. We are mystified by Hanbitsoft’s conclusions and any attempt to take over the IP will be met with a strong and swift response, to “illegally take over the IP”. All right title and interest in Hellgate; London resides in Flagship Financing, LLC a wholly-owned subsidiary of Flagship Studios. We are outraged that Hanbitsoft would attempt to completely tarnish the reputation of its most vital developer. Hanbitsoft’s new management clearly does not understand the terms of its relationship with Flagship.“

Well this is rather curious. Why would a Korean news site “lie” though? And if it was just a hoax from a news site, why would Flagship be angry with HanbitSoft’s new management if this was just a lie? We’ve also been getting some supposed secret tip offs that “something big” would be happening today, though we have remained skeptical about it. The tip off, however, mentioned that they had been acquired by an “Asian publisher.” And now we have Gamasutra reporting on supposedly “confirmed” layoffs at Flagship Studios (which, of course, goes against Flagship’s press release saying everything was okay). Hmm. We don’t have enough information to say “I told you so” just yet, so we will keep you posted as nothing is definite just yet. But hey, a new developer taking over promising more content faster? Keep your fingers crossed, folks, this might actually be a good thing for the game.

Edit, July 11, 4:30PM:

Big Download is also claiming the same story Gamasutra has received, also from their own (or the same) tipster.

“A source close to Flagship Studios contacted Big Download to report that nearly everyone in the development studio has been laid off. The studio, responsible for the development of MMO-lite Hellgate: London, was founded by several notable ex-Blizzard North employees such as Bill Roper and Max and Eric Schaefer.

Nothing is known regarding the fate of Hellgate: London, nor the in-development action-RPG Mythos. Expect official word from the development studio to be released within the next several days. “

Edit, July 11, 4:34PM:

nextgenbiz.com also has a report on the Big Download article. Marking of particular interest in this article:

“…A preoccupied Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship, said in a hurried phone conversation with Next-Gen on Friday that he could not talk about the unconfirmed reports for now, and offered only a ‘no comment.’ “

Edit, July 11, 5:04PM:

ve3d.ign.com has an update from HanbitSoft’s lawyers:

“Please understand that the facts are (1) HanbitSoft is an exclusive licensee of both Hellgate and Mythos in Asia, with rights to sublicense the games; (2) in addition, HanbitSoft is a secured creditor who has been pledged the Mythos (but not the Hellgate) intellectual property as collateral for a loan; (3) Comerica, another secured lender, has been pledged the Hellgate intellectual property as its collateral for a loan; (4) Flagship Studios does not currently own the intellectual properties to either game, which are held in separate companies subject to the security interests of lenders, and Flagship Studios’ interest in those companies is also pledged to its lenders; (5) it is unfortunate that Flagship turned down additional investments HanbitSoft offered to make that would have allowed it to keep its doors open, but HanbitSoft hopes to work with Comerica and some of the team at Flagship to see if there is a way to continue to generate content to keep Hellgate online in Asia and to finish the development of Mythos.“

Edit, July 11, 8:02PM:

The subscriber cancellation page on Hellgate London’s official site was reported down at 7:17PM. The proper people have been notified on the issue.

Edit, July 11, 10:24PM:

diabloiii.net is confirming that they have received insider information about what’s going on.

“…And it’s done. We have received inside confirmation that everyone has been laid off and the studio is closing.“

Edit, July 11, 11:34PM:

ve3d.ign.com is claiming in an update on their article that they have been contacted by an ex-Flagship developer.

“…However, we’ve been contacted by an ex-Flagship developer who has suggested that the studio is on the brink of closure and has no financial capital to fight Hanbitsoft’s legal challenge.“

Edit, (Phil Hoper) July 12, 7:00 AM:

VE3D has released an article, Flagship Studios’ Closure Confirmed, All Staff Fired, All I.P. Lost. In which they claim…

“Flagships’s Community Manager, Taylor Balbi, has revealed, through sources, that all Ping0 and Flagship Studios staff have been made redundant. Employees were notified at a company meeting and subsequently informed that the offices will be officially closed on Saturday. Balbi went on to reveal that three of the studio’s top brass dug into their own pockets to provide 30 days of pay to all employees.“

Oddly, Taylor Balbi has posted on the Official Hellgate: London Forums that whomever may have told him that wasn’t him!

“Well, Andrew I don’t want to tell you how to do your job at VE3D, but normally you check the quotes before making them appear as fact. I didn’t say this at all, and I have never spoken to you or recall ever speaking to you about anything ever. I’m sorry, but this news article is just not from me. “

Edit, July 12, 8:14AM:

To which Andrew Burnes responded with…

“I stand by my source. “

At which point in time Taylor Balbi replied with…

“Well I used to believe in Santa Claus too, but eventually I grew up and got over my imaginary idols.“

This is the same Taylor Balbi from the June 8th report from an IRC chat log. The unsubscribe option still has not been fixed.

Edit, July 12, 8:44AM:

In VE3D’s older article on the issue, two new updates have been added.

“In a telephone conversation, Flagship’s Community Manager, Evan “Scapes” Berman, refused to comment on the current situation at the studio, or whether he was still in its employ. Instead, he insisted that I direct all questions to ex-Blizzard man, Bill Roper. As of this time neither Bill Roper, Tricia Gray (Flagship’s PR representative) or HanbitSoft’s lawyers have responded to email inquiries.”

“Chris Clarke, Flagship’s European PR Manager, was also unable to provide further information in a phone conversation this morning. However, he did expect to have news in the coming days.“

Edit, July 12, 10:01AM:

A user on the Mythos forums has made an attempt to further translate the original Korean news article:

“Now, I don’t know Korean, but I am fluent in Japanese and Korean translates into Japanese very smoothly due to extreme similarities in grammar and vocabulary choice. I translated this mass of text with http://www.excite.co.jp/world/korean/ If anyone else wants to give it a shot. Here is what the article says:

‘HanbitSoft, Hellgate; London Intellectual Properties Underwriting Consideration’

(underwriting is the only word I could come up to translate that into)

‘According to Hanbitsoft (Representative Kiyon), they have made clear their intention to undertake Flagship Studio’s epic online game Hellgate: London’s intellectual property and work directly on the project.’

(”undertake” in this sense can mean both “take up” or “take over”, but in this case it might be more accurate to say “take a part in”)

‘This another example of the aggressive path that “Tesuli Entertainment” has shown since taking over Hanbitsoft.’

(Names going from English to Korean to Japanese and back to English get confusing… so I don’t know what “Tesuli Entertainment” is actually supposed to be.) [Tesuli Entertainment, or T3 Entertainment, is the company that took over HanbitSoft]

‘On the Tenth, Hanbitsoft Director (Somebody) said that “due to Flagship Studio’s continued financial situation, support incoming support requests are very difficult to deal with.” At the same time he said “Because we have joint possession over the intellectual properties we are examining our plan to do direct development on the game.” ‘

(I can’t translate the name of the director because it turned into Kanji with a different pronunciation on translation. The financial situation has meanings of being poor/unlikeable, or disappointing. The support mentioned here is technical support.)

‘The director then added that “Hanbit and “Tesuri” joining their development abilities would result in being able to create better content. Director (Somebody) was originally in charge of the group that took over Hanbitsoft and currently supervises its operations as CFO.’

‘When Hellgate London’s internal (aka Korean) service started it went it had 100,000 users in the first two weeks and brought in 3,000,000,000 Won (Korean Currency) in revenues, but the continual added content was considered lacking by users, who then left and resulted in ” a cog in performance.” ‘

(I know this seems like a run-on sentence, but it isn’t in Korean or Japanese. Also, the very end was difficult to translate, but it basically means that so many users leaving hurt financially.)

‘Flagship Studios is a company started by “The father of Starcraft” Bill Roper and Diablo Series developer David Brevik. Hellgate London was released domestically (In Korea) in 2008 and there are plans to have official domestic support services implemented by the end of the year. Hanbitsoft currently holds 9.5% of the shares in Flagship Studios. ‘

Edit, July 12, 1:05PM:

Guy Somberg’s profile on LinkedIn lists his employment history at Flagship Studios from February 2005 to July 2008.

Edit, July 12, 3:25PM:

Kotaku has a news story about the recent happenings:

“We got an anonymous tipster who said Flagship shut down abruptly yesterday, and that developers for both Hellgate (San Francisco) and Mythos (Seattle) have all been pink-slipped. “But there’s also hope that they will all have their jobs back at the end of next week at a brand new company,” our tipster says.

…Fan site Hellgate Guru first reported that HanbitSoft was taking full control of Hellgate: London and intended to continue the game. That brought a forceful denial from Flagship, and confirmation from HanbitSoft’s own attorneys (who slipped in a backhanded dig at the failing studio, which pretty much confirms Flagship’s demise.)

HanbitSoft’s attorneys said that while they’re an exclusive licensee of Hellgate and Mythos, it’s been pledged only the Mythos IP. Secured lender Comerica gets the Hellgate IP as collateral on the loan. Either way, Flagship does not own either…

…Our source says an official announcement will come next week (like what, at E3?) “

Edit, July 12, 6:00PM:

VE3D has done a bit of detective work in a recent update on their article.

“Amol Deshpande, Chris Schillinger, Jesse Jones and Ray Li all list their Flagship-Ping0 positions as having ended July 2008.“

Edit, July 12, 7:06PM:

Taylor Balbi denies, once again, ever informing VE3D of anything at all.

“I didn’t confirm or deny anything to anybody. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about some stuff. A few news sites are reporting that I talked to VE3D about it and told them everything. That’s not true, I didn’t talk to VE3D about anything…. ever actually. The only person they talked to was Scapes and the only thing Scapes commented was “I like cats.”

Do me a favor, don’t believe anything that they are claiming flagship studios employees said until something is said officially from Flagship Studios. “

Twenty-four hours has gone by and subscribers are still locked out from being able to unsubscribe to the game. Forumers have been inquiring to the problems ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]), while Ping0 still has not given an ETA when the ability to do so will be back up.

Edit, July 12, 7:37PM:

VE3D picked up that Patrick Harris lists that his employment at Flagship Studios ended on July 2008.

Edit, July 12, 10:08PM:

VE3D: “Eric Liu is no longer in the employ of of Flagship/Ping0.” End of employment: July 2008.

Edit, July 12, 11:38PM:

VE3D: Brent Shinn, Grant Watters, Greg Brown, Jonathan McEvoy, Jack Wood, and Chris Lambert; all previous Flagship/Ping0 employees, all terminated their employment on July 2008. That’s 13 confirmed employees so far.

Edit, July 13, 9:44AM:

Sol Invictus of HGG is confirming that the somethingawful.com tipster was a Ping0 employee.

“I have full confirmation that it was indeed a Ping0 employee who posted that.

Update: With the help of one of my readers, Warrior, we discovered that the poster going by the name of GLC on SomethingAwful is none other than one “Kalan Kier”, former Ping0 QA Manager.

According to GLC’s Something Awful user profile, his AOL instant messenger screen name is “kkieratnl”.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/mem…o&userid=18555

A Google search for “kkieratnl” reveals an archived forum post by GLC.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q…=Google+Search

In the archived forum post, GLC states that his e-mail address is “kalankier@gmail.com“.
http://www.pbreview.com/forums/archi…/t-326571.html

A LinkedIn search for “Kalan Kier” reveals that…
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/17a/47b

…according to Kalan Kier’s LinkedIn profile, “GLC” was never a Ping0 employee; however, the LinkedIn Directory appears to have cached his former profile’s “headline” which indicates that he was QA Manager at Ping0.
http://www.linkedin.com/find/k/k30/k30_55.html“

38 hours and counting since subscribers were not allowed to unsubscribe any more.

Edit, July 13, 10:00AM:

Joystiq is also confirming all the news going around.

“A bit of clarification recently surfaced regarding the closure of Hellgate: London and Mythos developer Flagship Studios — though we’d heard from an unnamed source that Flagship would be shutting its doors and letting go of “nearly everyone” on the payroll, Flagship community manager Taylor Balbi recently explained that the entire staff has been fired with a 30-day pension, paid for out of the pockets of the studio’s higher-ups.

The studio’s intellectual property has been turned over to two companies who had invested in Flagship throughout its short lifespan, with Mythos going to Korean gaming developer HanbitSoft, and Hellgate: London going to Comerica, a financial services company based out of Dallas. It’s expected these two companies will work together to continue Asian development for these two titles — though it’s unclear whether the uber-charming Mythos will ever hit North American shores.“

Edit, July 13, 11:05PM:

VE3D: Steve Goldstein, Pam Aronoff, and Jon Lavigne all now list their end of employment from Flagship Studios/Ping0 on July, 2008. That’s sixteen confirmed employees so far.

It has now been 52 hours since subscribers were unable to unsubscribe from the game.

Edit, July 14, 12:27AM:

VE3D: Joshua Galvin makes # 17.

Edit, July 14, 1:50 AM:

VE3D: Associate Producer, Matthew Jocelyn and Senior Systems Engineer, Max Kalika make #18 and #19 with updated LinkedIn profiles showing their employment ending as of July with Flagship Studios.

HanbitSoft’s Korean Hellgate: London community portal states in a news release that the localised version of the game will be supported, and development will continue utilising their own internal team, regardless of Flagship’s fate. The story concludes with the local team expressing regret at Flagship’s closure, though they do clarify that this assumption is based on international media reports.

Edit, July 14, 1:21PM:

VE3D: Ryan Valentin makes #20. VE3D also claims that a twenty-first employee confirmed to them that he/she was also laid off, but wishes to remain anonymous.

Edit, July 14, 7:00PM:

It has now been 72 hours since the option to unsubscribe has been down.

Edit, July 14, 7:44PM:

Grimby, a Flagship Studios employee, makes a post on the Mythos forums stating that “there will be an official statement at some point…”

Edit, July 14, 11:00PM:

VE3D: Brent Lamb, Brian Neal, and Matt Tasker make 23 confirmed.

Edit, July 15, 11:21AM:

VE3D: Diane “Tiggs” Migliaccio is also now confirmed (yet she is still moderating the forums). So is Robert Donald, Bob Moseley, Brennan Plunkett, Sarah Daly, and Chris Clarke. That makes 29 confirmed employees so far.

In other news, Spetznaz, a user from the HGG forums, has found that, in Germany, Hellgate was the second-largest selling game this week, according to GameStar. However, people have been reporting that they have been unable to create new accounts to log in to play the game ( [1], [2] ). It has now been 88 hours since subscribers have been unable to unsubscribe.

In a thread announcing Diane “Tiggs” Migliaccio’s discontinued employment to Flagship Studios/Ping0, Tiggs herself clarified the situation in one of her posts:

“I know that this information will make some of you unhappy… I am still here. There are mods on the forums but we do sleep too. When one of us is back on those in violation will be taken care of. So basically business as usual.

We are not the ones that provide the informaton you are looking for nor do we know when anything will be officially said.

As for the pictures and other things in the huge thread… we are just having fun with the community while we all sit and wait. We can go back to just being moderators with no interaction though very easily.

I ask that all posts follow the forum guidelines or risk being banned.“

Edit, July 15, 4:33PM:

After four days on the issue, an announcement has been made by Tiggs.

“There is no new information at this time. Moderators are unable to comment one way or the other about any information (period). As soon as we have more information, the proper authorities will post a news announcement.

• • Mythos and Hellgate servers are open and live.
  • Billing has been suspended until further notice — this means there is currently no reoccuring billing and billing modifications are suspended.

Thank you for your patience, continued support and assistance in abiding by the TOS, EULA and Forum Guidelines.“

No mention why subscribers are still unable to unsubscribe or why it was suspended in the first place.