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Flagship Suspends Development On MMORPG Mythos
by Eric Caoili
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July 21, 2008
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Hellgate: London developer Flagship Studios has announced that it has shut down its servers for MMORPG Mythos, which was undergoing private beta testing. The company did not disclose any details on when this "hiatus" might end.
Mythos' closing comes only two weeks after reports that Flagship had cut a significant portion of its development team. The studio had also reportedly laid off its staff at online services subsidiary and Mythos publisher Ping0.
A Korean news report translated by fan site Hellgate Guru later added that Hellgate: London's publisher in the region, HanbitSoft, "...is taking full control over the Hellgate: London intellectual property from Flagship Studios," and intends to continue the game using in-house staff.
Flagship responded to the news report with an official statement: "This story is an outright lie. We have no idea where they are getting their information from and have asked legal counsel to pursue the issue... We are mystified by Hanbitsoft’s conclusions and any attempt to take over the IP will be met with a strong and swift response."
HanbitSoft's U.S. lawyers later added that the Korean company had been pledged the Mythos intellectual property as collateral for a loan and that it is working to see if it is possible to finish the development of Mythos.
Said Flagship Studios COO and co-founder Max Schaefer in a Mythos forum posting before the message board and the beta servers were shut down: "Unlike most games, Mythos has been running with our testing community for almost its whole life. I really feel like we’ve all done this together. And despite this bump in the road, I think we’ve succeeded wildly. This is undoubtedly the best game community I’ve ever seen. This is the best game development team in the world, in both Seattle and San Francisco. The things we’ve learned here, and with you all, will be with us forever."
He continued: "PC gaming is changing, and I believe we’ve had a sneak preview with Mythos. With any luck, this will not be a long hiatus, and Mythos will be back. But even if it’s not, and even if we all move on, we’ve taken a lot of important steps forward. Game development is in many ways a continuum, and we all build on what came before. I know neither [lead designer Travis Baldree], the great Mythos dev team, nor myself are planning on doing anything but make games into the future. So no matter what, we’ll pick up where we left off, and you’ll be hearing from us shortly. We may not be the best business people on the planet, but we know how to make games."
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