Hellgate: London programmer claims staff leaving 'in droves'
by Alexander Sliwinski 
{ Jun 11th 2008 at 12:00PM }
Somberg does have some hope for the future (wait, isn't London occupied by demons in 2038?), saying that the game is doing well in Korea and has yet to start in China. He concludes that he likes the job, but that all the artists and programmers leaving the company is taking a toll on the future of Hellgate: London and Flagship as a studio. Well, we're hearing good things about Mythos ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DangerMouse @ Jun 11th 2008 12:08PM
Flagship Studios:
Infinity Ward is hiring.
Deck @ Jun 11th 2008 12:14PM
They're jumping ship!
(Har har, see what I did there?)
Dirty @ Jun 11th 2008 12:22PM
I think you missed the boat on this one.
riggs @ Jun 11th 2008 12:30PM
thats two in a ROW
dark_inchworm @ Jun 11th 2008 12:35PM
And then there were three...
sheets to the wind?
Dirty @ Jun 11th 2008 12:38PM
Hey guys dont go overboard.
Zertoss @ Jun 11th 2008 12:45PM
I think these nautical jokes have jumped the shark.
kodysandwich @ Jun 11th 2008 1:08PM
these are knot funny.
Blazur @ Jun 11th 2008 1:49PM
Best response chain in the history of the Internet! +1's all around :)
Tim The Enchanter @ Jun 11th 2008 1:51PM
I, for one, keeled over laughing.
PojoMofo @ Jun 11th 2008 12:20PM
its too bad, this game had so much potential and so much hype, and just fell short.
Agathos @ Jun 11th 2008 12:23PM
After reading the reviews, knowing that there have been several decent patches and updates addressing some of the negatives highlighted in reviews, and seeing it available on Amazon for under $20 and wanting all I can get for my new PC in a few weeks I gotta say I'm still close to picking this up.
Jeff @ Jun 11th 2008 2:48PM
I played it for a while and then got really bored.
But I got the collector's edition for like $25 bucks. No regrets there. I definitely got my moneys worth and know that at some point, when I'm extremely bored, I'll head back to it.
Dirt @ Jun 12th 2008 10:48AM
It's definitely worth the $20 you can find it for. The game wasn't that bad, it had a LOT of cool Diablo-like item upgrades. The skills and classes were also pretty cool. More than I knew what to do with. I'll probably go back and play a bit more again now that I think about it.
It just wasn't a smash hit 5 star game that everyone was hoping it would be.
Avoli @ Jun 11th 2008 12:34PM
I really really wanted this game to be good. It is....but after awhile....its just a bad flavor in your mouth. I go back to playing it from time to time, but as always, Im soloing even online. The game is constantly improving, I just dont think it'll make it to its original hype.
Sir Fidlious Wong (Justin T. McElroy Memorial Burn of the Day Award) @ Jun 11th 2008 12:39PM
Who cares about Hellgate, hurry the hell up with Mythos...
Dirty @ Jun 11th 2008 12:53PM
I would probably pick it up after I get my pc.
graham.williams @ Jun 11th 2008 1:40PM
I picked the game up two weeks ago (missed all of the oh noes emo drama that's driving users to whine) and it's been nothing but raw awesome in that time.
It's as close to Diablo 3 as you're going to get right now. The changes they've made with content patch 2.0 are stupidly good; new skills, new interface...
The developers have been blogging on their forum now... and it's been incredibly well received.
Master Bruce @ Jun 11th 2008 2:35PM
I agree. I'm not sure what everyone wanted out of the game, but I think its a fun game to pick up and play every now and then.
What are people looking for, the One Game to rule their entire life?
Mythor @ Jun 11th 2008 10:21PM
Maybe wait until you've played it a bit more than two weeks before passing judgement on the "emo drama".
I would suggest that you should have been around for the leadup to why there was "emo drama" but absent a time machine, that may prove difficult. :)
Suffice it to say, the "whiners" are completely justified in their complaints. It's great that you're not experiencing any troubles, but that doesn't mean those who have are wrong to complain.
Blazur @ Jun 11th 2008 1:48PM
They f-ed up royally so I'm not surprised. The game has received a backlash of complaints ever since it was released. To begin with they had an obviously greedy payment structure, and the while over promising and under delivering. Textures and monster models were reused, and the game had a very archaic feel to it. It's obvious they should have prolonged development further, yet they released the game in a buggy state simply to hit that Halloween date.
They had it coming...
http://www.flagshipped.com/
graham.williams @ Jun 11th 2008 2:04PM
Greedy payment structure? Get a job hippy.
Blazur @ Jun 11th 2008 2:44PM
It's not an issue of funds, it's the justification of the payment plan. The problem with their payment methodology is they were trying to capitalize off their success with Diablo2 for a game that doesn't warrant a subscription.
WoW and other MMO's...sure, it works. But this game hardly delivered regular or episodic updates. All it did was penalize the players unwilling to pay for the subscription by truncating their stash, limiting the availability of decent equipment, and restricting available player stats.
Also, if they got away with it in this game then other companies would the same crap as well, so I'm glad they failed and are being made into a martyr.
With the power of the Internet gamers nowadays are more aware and informed. They're not gonna be foolish enough to fall victim to a lifetime fee of $100+ if the game doesn't warrant that price. Games are already expensive enough.
Bob @ Jun 11th 2008 3:28PM
Here's a tip flagship
MAKE IT FREE, your content isn't worth a monthly fee. Heck, I would try it again if it were free.
ianp711 @ Jun 11th 2008 5:20PM
Not surprised.
I don't know why they didn't just wait longer to release the game
making sure it was BUG FREE! That would have saved them much of the
negative publicity in the first place. A good number of friends of
mine, including myself, were interested in buying the game, but with
all the negative press none of us did, it was so bad that none of us
even bothered with the free beta/demo.
Come to think of it, the icing on the cake that killed that game for
us was the pricing model. What the $!*# was Flagship thinking,
greedy fools, charge customers a monthly to play the actual full
game.
MORONS! Too bad Flagship, your greed and stupidity got to you, rest in peace!
Mythor @ Jun 11th 2008 10:18PM
GI.biz did not dig this up, their article was posted yesterday and uses the same Google cache link Flagshipped.com posted a little under a week ago.
And yes, they're touting how well it did in Korea. What they're not telling you is that it only did well at launch in Korea and has since sunk like a rock.
Flagship's reply to the situation is full of spin and disinformation.