Hellgate: London To Be Closed, Possibly Saved? 91
Namco Bandai recently announced that Hellgate: London would be shut down on January 31, 2009. They'd been supporting the game's servers since Flagship Studios saw massive layoffs in July. Now, a fansite has located an announcement on the game's Korean site suggesting that it may be picked up by a Taiwanese company called Redbana. The English version of the announcement says, "In the meantime, stay alert: the Hellgate will soon re-open, and your valor will be needed again."
Re:Open Source the server code! or possibly the ga (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the game assets were put into escrow as assets against investment from other companies. I don't remember if this "Redbana" is the investor, but there's someone that is interested and has a claim against the assets. So, no open sourcing for this game. Plus, consider that open sourcing a project like a game of this scale is not a non-trivial bit of work.
Anyway, the whole situation with Hellgate and Flagship was a pretty fucked up affair. You can see an interview with Bill Roper here: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3169356 [1up.com]. I also wrote a book about business and legal issues: Business & Legal Primer for Game Development [psychochild.org], which would give you some insight into the business and legal issues in game development.
Re:State of in-game advertising? (Score:5, Informative)
I was foolish enough to buy a "Founder's Offer" and paid $149.99, plus $49.99 for the game itself, for a lifetime subscription. I did this based on the fact that the beta was a lot of fun, and sure the game had bugs, but it genuinely seemed like a blast the first 25 levels or so, which was about all they would let us play.
After release, when I finished the game, I realized the bugs made it almost unplayable in groups. You could literally form a party, and you couldn't see the players on your own team. All you would see was a floating text name running around on a map. Also, the things they promised such as raid content, end-game, etc. just were not in the game period.
So, I did what any other smart gamer should do when you're sold something that doesn't live up to it's promises by the developer: I called HG:L first and tried to cancel my lifetime sub. Then, they wouldn't allow that, so I called my bank and disputed the credit card charge.
It took a few letters back and forth to the bank. I had to print out the text on their website promising content to lifetime subs that didn't exist. My bank refunded the entire $149.99.
More gamers need to do this. In fact, I'd say, if anyone out there hasn't done it yet, get your money back. There is a time limit on these things, but if you're sold a lifetime subscription and the company shut down the servers, get your money back.
If more gamers did this, we wouldn't have so many crap games getting released like this. For some reason game developers of the more sleazy variety (Bill Roper, I'm looking at you) look at the success of World of Warcraft and think "cha-ching": MMO = Easy money. Those game devs that are just in it for a quick buck need to get out now because you're making the rest of the industry look bad.