Hellgate not shutting down ?

Nadia

received this email today from forums@incgamers.com

 

found a link too

www.incgamers.com/Games/773/News/HellgateLondonRevived/14808

Hanbitsoft have taken a U-turn with the action RPG Hellgate London and revealed the game will continue.

Hellgate London was set to close down at the end of this month with Hanbitsoft pulling all online support. This evening Hanbitsoft issued a statement announcing the game will continue with full server support and future content updates.

Hanbitsoft are now citing the developers as Redbana US Studio following the demise of Flagship Studios and they will be in charge of developing future updates.

Focus will now be placed on "strengthening community features while maintaining the speedy and thrilling action game elements"

A large patch is planned and 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".

Sensibly Hanbitsoft will be turning the game into a free to play model. This will please many players who thought the game should always have been based on a free to play model but may upset those who paid for a lifetime 'Founders' subscription when the game was originally released.

Check out our forums here:

hellgate.incgamers.com/forums/

Nadia

Flagshipped has no further news on this

www.flagshipped.com/

 

I did not find anything revealing on the Redbana site

www.redbanaus.com/index.html

 

commentary at Gamasutra

www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php

The Korea-based firm's official weblog statement is written in English, clearly aiming it at the English-speaking market. However, it is unclear whether the company is formally allowed to operate the game in the U.S. or Europe, thanks to the conflicting Namco Bandai publishing agreement -- or whether it might intend to operate an English language version on foreign servers.

 

www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56934

Gamasutra claims the that game "will continue on here [in the West]", though HanbitSoft's official blog does not specify territories for the forthcoming updates.

North American and European publisher Namco Bandai previously said that it would shut down the multiplayer servers in those territories on January 31, 2009, adding that "the servers will never exist in the US and EU again" as Hanbit does not have the rights.

According to Namco, HanbitSoft "owns the IP and rights to publish anywhere other then the US and EU." Following the closure of Hellgate developer Flagship, Hanbit described itself as "the publisher and distributor of Hellgate: London in Asia."

baff

It's going free-to-play apparently.