It’s hard to stomach, that a game developed by a number of talented former Blizzard Entertainment employees that not only worked on Diablo II but lead by Bill Roper failed so terribly that it was the demise of a whole company. Hellgate: London flopped so hard that it ranks as one of the biggest failures in 2008 and that failure was the catalyst behind Flagship Studios going belly-up back in July 2008. Another MMOG in development by the company, Mythos, showed a lot of potential also fell to the wayside in the cataclysmic financial destruction.

Hellgate: London continues to run on life-support provided by Namco Bandai, but come the 1st of February, 2009 the servers will shut down. Late last year, stating in a press release the Korean publisher and developer HanbitSoft said development will continue on the title and will switch to a free-to-play subscription model. Only time will tell for sure.



So while recent news spreads that Hellgate: London will live on the facts tell a different story. HanbitSoft does own the IP, engines, and source code and continues development on the title but only in Asia. It doesn’t mean Hellgate: London’s operations and development will continue in the US/UK. Namco Bandai still owns distribution rights in those territories. Namco Bandai has gone on record and denied the game’s revival by Hanbitsoft in the US and European markets.