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The story's been going around for a few hours now, but Flagship Studios is no more. Every employee's been laid off, the higher ups even paid them out of pocket for a 30-day pension.

I know they were not exactly indie (or original given that their only two IPs were Diablo clones), but it's still sad to hear.

Also, I was really looking forward to a patch for Mythos...oh well.

Massively article (http://www.massively.com/2008/07/12/flagship-studios-its-worse-than-that-hes-dead-jim/)

Wow, I guess that Hellgate shot them in the foot worse then everyone thought. I was looking forward to Mythos too :(

Oh well.

sucks

Did anyone actually play Hellgate?  I read some reviews that said it wasn't really that great.

I did, after getting to the 3rd or 4th train station, which looked like the previous ones, with combat areas that resembled the previous combat areas, I quit, the coolness of upgradeable weapons was lost.

Why didn't they release a free trial of Hellgate?

I would have bought the game on release day, but the reviews were so mixed.

After the reviews that said the game was mediocre, they should have released a free trial.  I really wanted to try the game, but I wasn't willing to invest $30 minimum in a game that could be crap.  If they would have released a free 14 day trial, they probably would have gotten at least 1 monthly fee out of me.

Stupidity.

Still, I hope that all of the employees can find work ASAP.  I have much sympathy for the families, and much respect for some of the employees' past work.

I played Hellgate with my friend and we had some fun. But the truth is that the game was bad. You know - there are these games that you play and actually even like, but you know they aren't really good. This was exactly that.

It had some really cool ideas (sniping in FPP while your mate is hackin' and slashin' the old way, scorching demons with your cyber-cabalistic powerglove... good times) and was overall a pretty good Diablo clone that even tried to push the genre a bit further. It was a bit monotonous, but that's typical to every H&S. However, it suffered from loads of really critical issues. At launch the players couldn't really chat with each other, you often couldn't see your team mates during gameplay, loading times were a killer and the game crashed every now and then. And it was meant to be played in teams!
On the top of that, it was actually pretty hard to pay for a subscription or even join the forums, if you were from EU. Talk about limiting your audience.

Actually, it gave you an impression that the game doesn't really want you to play it. Fuck, it even didn't remember your name when you logged on to the servers - you had to enter it manually each time. And then wait for 10 minutes to load. And then you couldn't meet and communicate with your mate. And then you've found that you were invisible to each other. And then the game crashed...

They did release a single player trial for Hellgate. It was horrible!

didn't someone in the IRC work for them?

Makes you wonder just why some games end up like this. Most of the time I feel it is tight schedules, lack of experience, lack of good teamplay and leadership in the dev team, shareholders and other money-grubbing morons trying to be game designers, or a combination of those. Maybe Flagship did a small scale Daikatana, like so many other companies tend to. They shoot much higher than they're capable of and end up wasting millions.

Nobody learns with Icarus nowadays.

I think so, yeah. Can't remember who it was though.  :-[

of all the years hellgate was being hyped, i never understood what was appealing about it.

it looked down right stupid to me.
like, 14yo stupid.

it's a knight! but a futuristic knight! with guns! oh and like...a glowing visor!
and.... it takes place in... LONDON! oh and its all fucked up and dark! and you can go to HELL!

is anybody surprised it failed and killed its studio?
not to be a dick here but im glad this kind of derivative and uninspired thinking is met with bankruptcy.

i do feel bad for everybody being laid off, tho.
that always sucks.

Wait, what? Is Hellgate a subscription based online game? I played the demo and kind of liked it but I never realised it was multiplayer or online or anything :D

Mythos looked promising from what I played, as far as Diablo clones go, especially free ones.

It was subscription optional, for those who wanted advanced features over the unpaying masses.