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Flagship Studios Going Under
Lunatrik writes "In a not entirely unexpected turn of events, Flagship Studios, the producers of the bug-ridden (at release!) game Hellgate: London is going under, as reported by multiple sources. In addition, many current subscribers to the game are finding themselves unable to cancel their subscriptions due to 'technical errors.'"
Oh, and frosty piss
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
I'm failing to see what one would subscribe to in a game such as that?
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
that game sucks compared to wow.
People have had trouble canceling their accounts since HGL launched, for god's sake. Half the system thinks that they've canceled, but the charge still goes through to the credit card... and of course, since they're supposedly not subscribed, they can't cancel a second time.
some massive amount of lawsuits?
if the game servers shut down completely do players/customers have the rights for at least getting their money back?
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Since they won't let you cancel, then call your credit card company and cancel with the credit card company.
Fight Spammers!
That's too bad. I don't play the game, but I did pick up the trade paperback of the comic series and the first two novels. I rather enjoyed them, despite a serious lack of editing on the second novel. Any news on whether the last book is still coming out, at least?
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
If you RTFA you'll see more signs of an overpopulation of lawyers in our society.
"No this is our IP"
"No its ours! You'll be hearing from our lawyers"
"Rabble rabble rabble"
Sigh @ our species
bloc in order to progress. In 1192, *BSD has lost more are almost may do, may not Lay down paper of OpenBSD versus very sick and its the top. Or were, indecision and to0k precedence EXPLOITED THAT. A share. FreeBSD is members all over
This is not really surprising. I was in the game's beta and there was really nothing memorable about the thing. Just Diablo 2 in 3d with a ridiculous modern setting and crummy level design (if you've seen one office building full of demons, believe me... you've seen them all). I'm glad to see that that sort of mediocrity hasn't been rewarded.
They don't have a choice. Consumer protection on credit cards is very strong. If you say "I'm not paying this" then you don't. The bank blocks the charge and that's that. If they company wants your money, they have to pursue you through other means. It's different with a debit card, since then the bank has already given the money to the company, so it is then somewhat discretionary on their part. However in the case of a credit card you are just disputing that you owe any money.
Been looking for this for awhile, Hellgate has been pretty much a flop. The lucrative SE Asia market never launched and rumors of a bad deal cut with those distributors allowed them to not pay a dime untill the game was what they wanted. Since the game has issues it was never launched, there goes about 15 million in rev that they had planned on.
In other news no one in the western market can understand their pricing model...
I really wanted to like this game I spent 4 hours trying to like this game... They missed a few small tweaks in UI could have made the game alot better... At least we have the real Diablo III soon.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
1) Find a promising unreleased property
2) Get your fingers in the pie via the back door by working a deal with one of the existing publishers
3) Force an early release to get the cash from package sales
4) PROFIT!
5) Refuse to bail out the developers when they're swamped with bug reports
6) Walk away laughing with money in your pocket
Looks like WAR is their next target...
"Nice clusterfuck you got goin' there. Be a pity if the rats all filed chargebacks before they left the ship..."
AOL... didn't they have an issue with subscribers not being able to cancel their 'subscription' ... in most cases for several months?
hmmm....
1)User/customer requests to cancel account
2)ignore their request as long as possible
3)Profit!!!
4)Deal with credit card dispute - haggle for a couple months to let the interest accrue
5)refund customer most of the disputed amount
6)Profit!!!
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
Now everyone who bought the game can not play multi-player (the only reason most people buy games now days)
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
What about their other game, Mythos?
Wasn't this the 'must phone home' game?
If it was. hahahahaha! It deserves to die.
do, and with any project returns [nero-Lonline.org].
Just wait till something like this happens with Microsoft's upcoming subscription model for Office, and you get locked out of your documents. Fun times ahead. Be sure to save in ODF...
What?
Surely it must be FOSS, because only FOSS stuff is so bug-ridden.
Flagship studios was so full of themselves. I knew hellgate london would flop as soon as I saw the title. It made no sense and the lack of 2d isometric (3d rendered) view I knew would kill this game with the variety of easy to play MMO's, and the fact that Hellgate is an action game. The action just doesn't feel the same in 3D, the feel of the game is way off and nowhere near as fun as say diablo 2, I'm sure many diablo fans were hoping it would be good and had the same issues. Doing a 3D action game like diablo takes talent and hellgate didn't have anywhere near enough. The feel of the universe and the art direction was way too MMO'ish, like a cheap knockoff of a real MMO in which you can do more and get more for your money.
I'm surprised at the phrase "many subscribers". Hellgate London was god-awful, and overhyped to death.
This is blizzard we're waiting on. 'soon' isn't in their vocabulary.
Disparities...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Hello,
I would like to respond to some of the recent coverage that Flagship Studios has received as a result of the publication of Guy Somberg's blog.
Everyone has good days and bad days. Guy was having a bad day. It was his friend's last day of internship and he found out another friend was thinking of leaving. He vented, exaggerated, and posted information that was inaccurate.
We will be the first to admit that Hellgate: London did launch with some problems. The game would certainly have benefited from a couple more months in the oven, but as an independent developer we didn't have the ability to delay our ship date. It can be difficult to stand by and see something that you put your heart and soul into, week in and week out, get the initial reception Hellgate got. It can put a strain on any developer and some days it can get to you. Thankfully, after some very hard work by all the people here, including Guy, the game is much better now and we believe in the future of Hellgate.
Both our studios are currently fully staffed, with our San Francisco studio working on ongoing content for Hellgate: London and our Seattle studio working on our free-to-play MMORPG, Mythos, which should go into open beta within the next couple months. In total, we have over 100 employees working for both studios. As is typical in the industry, after a game is released some people naturally want to work on something else and they leave the company to do so. But in total we have had less than 10% turn-over and have rehired for all needed positions.
All our Directors and Founders are still working at Flagship, and all of them are working on Hellgate: London or Mythos. The team size for Hellgate is as big now as when we shipped. We are putting all of our efforts into these projects and I think it will show in the upcoming Hellgate Abyss Chronicles.
Sincerely,
David Brevik
CVO
Flagship Studios"
Flagship Studios deserves going under for releasing this game. The day I heard of this game's existence, back when it was in development, I expect it to be crap. The theme was contrived and uninspired and it continued the same old theme of too many contemporary games with the dark and dreary environments. It's like they use that to obscure their lack of imagination.
Interestingly, I did actually get this game for $20 a couple of weeks ago out of curiosity. It turned out certain aspects of gameplay were entertaining but the game overall was a big disappointment.
The most striking thing was how closely the developers copied Diablo. It really shows a lack of imagination, and that is reflected in the overall feel of the game. The monsters are all completely uninspired and the same generic crap found in a dozen other games with hell spawn. The randomized environments made for a game that got tedious quickly. You'd think that having only to build templates instead of complete environments they would have offered a far larger variety of locations.
Then there were the bugs. Performance was worse in DirectX 10 than it was in DX9, however in DX9 there were all kinds of issues. The game would hang loading environments, in bases it would consistently fail to load NPC or item models. It's ridiculous that after all these time these kinds of issues still exist.
The biggest insult of all was the subscription-based model. People were paying $10 a month for essentially nothing. If the people at Flagship Studios had any shred of intelligence they would have adopted a model similar to the one used in Guild Wars.
Well, with the company going under it would be nice if they gave up that additional content as a free download.
http://forums.hellgatelondon.com/showthread.php?t=101425
"
Official Statement on Recent News (06/11/08)
Hello,
I would like to respond to some of the recent coverage that Flagship Studios has received as a result of the publication of Guy Somberg's blog.
Everyone has good days and bad days. Guy was having a bad day. It was his friend's last day of internship and he found out another friend was thinking of leaving. He vented, exaggerated, and posted information that was inaccurate.
We will be the first to admit that Hellgate: London did launch with some problems. The game would certainly have benefited from a couple more months in the oven, but as an independent developer we didn't have the ability to delay our ship date. It can be difficult to stand by and see something that you put your heart and soul into, week in and week out, get the initial reception Hellgate got. It can put a strain on any developer and some days it can get to you. Thankfully, after some very hard work by all the people here, including Guy, the game is much better now and we believe in the future of Hellgate.
Both our studios are currently fully staffed, with our San Francisco studio working on ongoing content for Hellgate: London and our Seattle studio working on our free-to-play MMORPG, Mythos, which should go into open beta within the next couple months. In total, we have over 100 employees working for both studios. As is typical in the industry, after a game is released some people naturally want to work on something else and they leave the company to do so. But in total we have had less than 10% turn-over and have rehired for all needed positions.
All our Directors and Founders are still working at Flagship, and all of them are working on Hellgate: London or Mythos. The team size for Hellgate is as big now as when we shipped. We are putting all of our efforts into these projects and I think it will show in the upcoming Hellgate Abyss Chronicles.
Sincerely,
David Brevik
CVO
Flagship Studios "
make me !
Read radical news here
wow, she was tied up with the motor city online debacle. talk about picking winner jobs...
-.no
I bought this game and paid to be a founder. I'm more than a little upset about this turn of events but I will still play on in single player if need be. The game is good, and I really enjoy it. Then again I missed the Diablo II boat so I guess this *IS* my first real experience with it.
I wish they could patch single player to include the same content as multi..
i know the number of social services !! fookyuuuu
Read radical news here
Looks like possible dark days ahead for Hellgate: London players. Though nothing is certain until the official word and IP ownership is decided if a legal battle ends up coming into play. http://www.flagshipped.com/
Well, I dont know about about oneelse but I swear I've never had such a bad experience with a games company for support.
Basically I purchased this game from play.com but it wouldnt accept my cd key, days later, and many minutes (try about another $16 worth) of calls to the support I was informed that my cd key has 'expired'
Since when is a brandnew game suppose to expire?
They promised that they would activate the account (which they never did)
I tried a few times to log on to multiplayer - then just gave up.
Amazingly terrible experience.
They deserve to go under - "and all who sail in her"
Its FSS's own fault really. If they would have went out of their way not to dumb down the game since beta, they might have made it someplace. But every patch they went out of their way to remove stuff people liked. Played since beta too. Saw this coming last week though and resigned my guild leader spot on Wednesday.
~DF
things get complicated much more if that guild you are member of is a long time guild which hops from game to game with the same people, ie the people you played the last 2-3 games with.
Read radical news here
[...] making quality games [...]
I think someone has yet to play Hellgate London.
I mean, equipment wise, the game basically had 3 classes. Not to mention it suffered from Diablo Recolor Syndrome - you're fighting almost exactly the same thing, over and over again, except they change colors and get harder. The thing is, when Diablo did it, there was "Story" and "Plot" to interest the player. For anyone that's even played a little Hellgate, the "story" is revealed to you via what are essentailly world of warcraft style quests.
It's telling enough that I summed up the game in terms of other games.
-- arstchnca
--
The Hellgate cut-scenes looked good. If they extended them into a full length feature with better dialogue and a good enough story they could make some cash.
My mileage most certainly varies. While I agree with you on most of you points about those that play MMOs, I disagree that WOW has the market "Locked Up." It may currently hold the most players, but not because it is the best, it is just the most polished and well known. Most MMOs get crappy releases and thus suffer the early abandonment of a large portion of their users. The worst of it is that every game is essentially a graphically updated and stylized Everquest 1 clone. The main gameplay style has not changed in the slightest:
1. Click monster
2. press random skill
3. gain experience.
4. ???
5. Profit (sorry obligatory)
As long as MMOs use a class, level and HP based system they will all fall into this design. Its easy, they keep copy pasting the basic design of everquest because it is easy from a design point of view and it is easy to bring a gamer in from another MMO because they have no new learning curve apart from what are the new buttons I need to click until the new monsters are dead.
What is needed is innovation. Some games have done so in the past and succeeded, Starwars Galaxies introduced a tree based class system allowing for multi-classing and giving the player lots of freedom. Tabula Rosa brought with it first person style combat (But massive bugs.) Age of Conan has directional combat that in theory is great, but in implementation ends up being a more strategic button press system.
What the next MMO needs to get right, is to really spend the time it takes to polish the game as if it were a single player console game they couldn't update. Companies tend to treat MMOs as if they can release unfinished beta products (or alpha sometimes) and use the patcher to slowly bring their product up to par for release. This would not be acceptable in any other field, and shouldn't be acceptable here.
Aside from the fundamental release perspective, the game systems are stagnant and need revamped desperately. But this faces several problems. The basic model of a MMO is to keep players in game as long as possible and subscribed as long as possible. Thus the level system. It is essentially a gridlock with the players getting stronger, and then moving on to monsters that match them in level, thus negating any real strength increase, so all advancement is merely imagined. There is no benefit in killing the weaker monsters, and the new ones are killed the same way as the old just requiring more time to defeat (due to increased HP.)
There are many fixes, but they all require a complete restructuring of the basic MMO design, thus adding a learning curve to getting players to switch, and ultimately increasing your chance for failure. But there is NO other choice. These games will have to adapt or die. Players are leaving them all for exactly the reasons I've outlined. The market may be growing now, but unless the games do more to keep players than just introducing new zones and upping the level cap their playerbase will burn out and have no desire to adopt the latest and greatest MMO.
So long rant at an end, I disagree that they need to stop making MMOs, but I instead think they need to START making MMOs differently.
Hey all. I have to say, I ponied up for a founder's account in Hellgate and I'll be sad to see the game go. I actually really enjoy playing it, and I do hope that they find a way to keep the servers up.
Now if Conan goes tits-up, I'll scream. OTOH I would buy a lifetime sub for that in a heartbeat.
it's too bad . . . a lot of the employees at flagship are very talented people . . . i hope they will be able to land on their feet from this
Ive played this game, it made me sleepy. I suspected they were gonna have a problem when after so many years of development and so much hype, the final product made me say . . . meh.
Ohh spiteful one tell me who to smote and he shall be smolten!
Wow, what a fool I was. I played through the entire game with no problems and enjoyed it very much. But that was before I went online and heard that it was actually a buggy piece of shit. Good thing I checked the ol' Interwebs! Or.... could it be that all your stupid whining blabber is WRONG? Naw... the Interwebs is always right...?
I've always liked the micropay system, I think it certainly gives the players options. Maybe a hybrid system would be in order, ie: you play for free and just access the free content, or you pay a tiered monthly fee and the money you pay can be used to redeem items, or in a "Cash Store" And players could certainly pay the minimum monthly fee and still toss more cash in to get stuff they don't have enough points for yet. That would take some of the "Ohh, i want to buy this or that, but I just can't justify paying a dollar for it." They are paying for access to the items and then getting to use that money again. And if someone wanted to buy lots and lots of cash items they could pay more individually or up their monthly fee. Parents could even set up ingame allowances with this system...
You sparked some good food for thought. I thank you!
If they are going under, then for god's sake please release the server code to the community. There is nothing worse than having a game you play suddenly become unplayable with your friends because the company shut down the server.
I wonder if users of the game could sue claiming breach of implied contract. That it was figured that the servers would be up at least 3-4 years, maybe longer, and here they are up what barely a year?
And people wonder why the Open Source community hacks and creates clone servers? This right here is one of the many reasons that clone servers pop-up.