Despite news to the contrary back in November, Korean publisher and developer HanbitSoft still plans to maintain Hellgate: London as a free-to-play title on a global scale after Namco Bandai’s January 31st server shutdown.
You might recall the demise of Hellgate developer Flagship Studios from last month, and the subsequent shutdown of Mythos and IP fight over Hellgate. Now Flagship’s former Seattle team has reconstituted itself as Runic Games, continuing its focus on action-MMORPG games.
Travis Baldree, formerly of Flagship Seattle, emailed us Sunday with the news release. He was the project director for Mythos and is now the president of the new venture. Baldree is joined on the management team by Max Schaefer, formerly executive producer for Mythos. Baldree said all 14 on the Seattle team are aboard — “basically the whole Mythos team”.
The studio has a Web site, and the full news release is on the jump.
So Flagship (and Hellgate) are sunk, and Mythos has been canned along with them, right? Not necessarily! According to some job postings over on Gamasutra and DICE.com, Korean publisher T3 is opening a development studio in San Francisco, and will continue work on both titles. Seems random, but T3 own a controlling stake in HanbitSoft, Hellgate’s Korean publisher, and the company at the centre of a tussle over ownership of the game as Flagship was going down. A tussle they seem to be well on the way to winning. The news probably won’t matter to Hellgate players since, outside of Korea, there really aren’t any left, but it’s good news for Mythos fans.
Report: T3 To Continue Hellgate, Mythos Development In SF Office [Gamasutra]