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Forums - Gaming - Flagship Studios' entire staff fired, all intellectual property lost

BottledSpringWater on 13 July 2008

Flagship Studios' entire staff fired, all intellectual property lost

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/12/flagship-studios-entire-staff-fired-all-intellectual-property

46 Comments by Griffin McElroy Jul 12th 2008 8:30PM
Filed under: PC, MMO, Business


A bit of clarification recently surfaced regarding the closure of Hellgate: London and Mythos developer Flagship Studios -- though we'd heard from an unnamed source that Flagship would be shutting its doors and letting go of "nearly everyone" on the payroll, Flagship community manager Taylor Balbi recently explained that the entire staff has been fired with a 30-day pension, paid for out of the pockets of the studio's higher-ups.

The studio's intellectual property has been turned over to two companies who had invested in Flagship throughout its short lifespan, with Mythos going to Korean gaming developer HanbitSoft, and Hellgate: London going to Comerica, a financial services company based out of Dallas. It's expected these two companies will work together to continue Asian development for these two titles -- though it's unclear whether the uber-charming Mythos will ever hit North American shores.


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alpha_dk on 13 July 2008

Okay, so they got the loan from Comerica like what, 3 months ago? Did they really put up one of their only promising IPs as collateral for about 3 months worth of money?

I mean, granted, as it turns out it was probably only worth about that much, if not less. We'll see what Comerica has planned for it; they'll likely look for a buyer in EA or something just to recoup some losses.

Maybe someone will be able to make a monetizable plan out of the franchise; I don't think the current plan will be able to work for a second version.



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Garcian Smith on 13 July 2008

This just goes to show you that a new studio, no matter how talented, should ALWAYS start small. Hellgate was a huge, ambitious project, but it was also the product of a team that hadn't yet learned how to work together. Thus, it turned out to be a mediocre bug-fest at launch.

Had the company started with a smaller, less ambitious title, then they would have had less bugs and problems to deal with, less financial risk, and would have had an opportunity to organize themselves into a cohesive team in a less stressful, frantic environment. Then they could have used the funding from that project, combined with the know-how to work together, to tackle a project like Hellgate.



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Bored4life on 13 July 2008

Agrees with Garcian.
Start off with a number of small,profitable titles and then slowly move up as they cashpool grows larger.
Another overly ambitious western dev bites the dust.



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dib8rman on 13 July 2008

With a name like flagship. >.>



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aiden.cronus on 13 July 2008

lol @ dib
:)



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hunter_alien on 13 July 2008

This is so last hour news :P Well I havent cared about them anyways :P



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Neos on 13 July 2008
hunter_alien said:
This is so last hour news :P Well I havent cared about them anyways :P

;p;p;p;p;p;p

 



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SaviorX on 13 July 2008

That sucks.....O well!

*licks lollipop and walks away*



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Onimusha12 on 13 July 2008

more talent for other developers to absorb.