Hellgate: London may continue as a free-to-play online title.
Hellgate London has been a very public disaster. The fallout from the demise of developer Flagship Studios has read like fiction, with an international slanging match going on over the future of the game.
The only place in the world that Hellgate succeeded was Korea. This was, in part, thanks to the understanding of that market as brought by founders of Flagship Studios from experience at Blizzard. This had led to a specific publishing deal with Korean company HanbitSoft (the rest of the world was handled by Namco-Bandai).
When Flagship went under, there was much confusion as to the future of Hellgate. HanbitSoft now owned the IP and insisted the game would continue worldwide, with a newly established US development studio handling future content needs. Namco-Bandai countered this with an announcement that the game would not continue to operate, with the servers being turned off for good on January 31st, 2009.
That deadline is mere days away, yet the future of Hellgate is still less than clear. According to Gamasutra, HanbitSoft is asserting ownership and will be making the game a free to play title with a worldwide scope. This is backed up with the following announcement made on the official HanbitSoft blog.
Hellgate: London, Future Updates are All About Stronger Community
Seoul, Korea - January 23, 2009 – HanbitSoft, Inc. announced today that Hellgate: London, an online action RPG developed by Redbana US Studio, will focus its future updates on strengthening community features. During Hellgate: London’s meeting with fan gamers on the 16th, producers and marketing managers revealed plans regarding the direction of future development and new features to be updated.
Maintaining the Speedy, Thrilling Action Game Elements and Strengthening the Community System
Hellgate: London’s future development direction will be focused on strengthening community features while maintaining the speedy and thrilling action game elements, as many users have wanted better community functionality for quite some time. HanbitSoft revealed the new content that is to be included in the next large-scale patch, which is expected to be released soon. In the upcoming update, HanbitSoft plans to combine the two game play modes, unifying the split two communities into one. Also planned are class balance improvements and differentiation of each of the 5 acts. Gamers who attended the conference applauded this announcement.
Hellgate: London Switches Over to a Free-to-Play Model
During the conference, HanbitSoft also announced that Hellgate: London will soon be serviced in a free-to-play model. This was the first time that any related official announcements had been made. HanbitSoft explained that by switching over to a free-to-play model, users will feel less burdened, opening the doors to a larger, more diverse gaming community. The date of the free-to-play switch over is undetermined at this point, but HanbitSoft stated that more news will be released through the official Hellgate: London website soon.
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mcgarnagle
2009.01.28 07:47
Great!
Now if they can make the game fun after about level 15, they'll be set!