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.'"

what next?

[crazybit]

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?

Re:Blizzard

[KDR_11k]

They were releasing a lot of subscriber-only content so one who subscribes gets a crapton of new features. No idea if it's worth it, I didn't subscribe (and didn't play online as offline play had no lag).

A Good Thing

[Naelok]

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.

Fuck EA

[BJH]

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...

Sounds like a job for Captain Chargeback...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Nice clusterfuck you got goin' there. Be a pity if the rats all filed chargebacks before they left the ship..."

Re:A Good Thing

[KDR_11k]

The run and gun gameplay was different to Diablo. Yeah, the overall design was very close to Diablo but playing it as an if-it-moves-shoot-it type FPS worked pretty well for me.

Re:A Good Thing

[BJH]

The beta pretty much sucked, but the game's been in good shape since the Stonehenge expansion came out.
A lot of people were looking forward to the 2.0 patch release, so I hope whatever deal Flagship works out covers it...

Re:Bug-ridden, unimaginative game.

[DerWulf]

Ironic considering that D3 will probably make Blizzard billions :)

Re:interesting

[DerWulf]

you might but you'll probably be wrong. Criticisms of WoW usually boil down to questioning the MMORPG formula (besides the point) or a perceived lack of attention to your most favorite activity in the game (PvP v PvE etc). The way blizzard treats it's customers, the art in WoW, the wealth of content, the game mechanics and the technical side of client and server are largely impeccable. Seriously, reading the flagshipped.com site or having a look at AoC really reminded me what an outstanding game WoW is and there really is no game in the genre that plays in the same league as WoW.

Re:what next?

[King Of Flan]

I doubt there is anything the customers can do because there is a single player element to the game, which is exactly the same as multiplayer. They will say that you still have all the game content.