Flagship has been flagshipped?

• July
• 11

2:43 pm 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.