Hellgate: London staying alive through free-to-play

by Shawn Schuster Jan 26th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-fi, Business models, MMO industry, News items, Hellgate: London, Free-to-play

Always named in the popular lists of "Failures for 2007/2008", Hellgate: London may not be dying off as easily as we thought. As reported by Gamasutra, HanbitSoft has announced that they will be keeping the game alive as a free-to-play model after the initial closure date of January 31st, 2009. They can do this (despite Namco-Bandai's decision to close the game) because they own the IP, engines and source codes for the Flagship Studios title.

In November of last year, we touched on this a bit, as HanbitSoft mentioned their continued efforts with the game, which might even include an expansion. At that time, the rumor was that it would be available only in Asia, yet this newest announcement is for global availability. This brings up an interesting thought though: If Hellgate: London can do it, can the others?

Tags: f2p, flagship-studios, free-to-play, gamasutra, hanbitsoft, hellgate-london, namco-bandai

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Hardy said on 1:08PM 1-26-2009

Of course other IPs can do it.

F2P is a good business model.
True, it'll never get up there with WoW (Like anything will) but if you just have 1 server with very loyal players, throw in some purchasable items and cosmetic chages and you'll probably make a profit.

I hope Tabula Rasa comes back, it really wasn't that bad of a game.

Hellgate wasn't BAD either. Just both titles lacked content due to moronic leadership.

JP said on 1:29PM 1-26-2009

"can" it be done, sure. "will" it is another story.

HG:L was an independent studio, that sold assets to try and get above water. TR isn't in that boat. NCsoft likely isn't going to sell anything off, as that's a product that was completly created, manufactured, maintained and distrubuted in house.

In TR's case, what if some one did buy it, bring a resurgence and then the game thrives? NCsoft would have NO ONE to point the finger at for it's failure under their portfolio. How would the studios handle the inevitable "Why should anyone play your games when you make them fail" stand point?

I'm all for it, and if there's a way that it does happen, I'll be happy. I'd be even happier if the game was turned into a resonding success (just to stick it the big wigs at NCsoft. NOT the dedicated TR dev team. Shout out Kaga, Vagabond, Harley and Critters!)

... plus there's the whole "Richard Garriot's" Tabula Rasa legal issues.

Xeos Celeres said on 1:29PM 1-26-2009

I love the Hellgate IP - the concept, the story, the visuals. What made it failed here in Asia was because players couldn't find the content - patch were months late, and many patches never made it to us. And the angst of a failed payment system - not billing like in the US. But it never reached our shores.

Local servers lagged bad. Players from Hong Kong suffered with unplayable lag.

Peter Anargirou said on 1:56PM 1-26-2009

This is exciting news! I feel bad for all the people that gave away their items and palladium.

NekoAli said on 2:02PM 1-26-2009

This is good news to me, I always liked HG:L. I started playing it well after launch, so I missed the nastiness that surrounded the launch of the game. I like the IP and story, and the game itself is fun to play, so I'm glad to see it's keeping on.

What I wonder though is... what flavor of the game is being offered up as free to play? Originally you had the Single Player offline version and the free to play online version, which contained the same storyline missions and such, and didn't change that much from the launch. Some things were added to the F2P online version like expanded storage space and in game mail, but most of the additional content (new areas and such) were only for the paid subscribers. Will this 'new' F2P version include the content that was only for subscribers before, or will it be the same as the F2P version under Flagship and Bandai?

And more importantly... does this maybe mean we've still got a chance at seeing Mythos running again?

Usagizero said on 2:34PM 1-26-2009

I want to also say Hellgate wasn't as bad as people made it out to be. I feel so much of the hate was from expectations, and the rushed release. The lack of content made me think that it was in the mindset of releasing the main game, then also releasing content as the game went on. I also feel this is what DDO thought of doing, but neither really took off to the point where doing it more often was profitable.

I could be wrong though.

jdmc said on 2:38PM 1-26-2009

AS NekoAli said above are we going to get the fully patched game or just the plain jane version? Hellgate should have never been a subscription service anyways it always should have been a charge for content packs. I remember paying monthly for months at a time and never getting anything.

danarchy said on 3:33PM 1-26-2009

should have been released ala guild wars style, charged for expansions etc. I always found it to be a really fun game, even had a sunday hellgate group i ran around with. Other than inventory management and redundantly repeated maps it was unique and super fun!

Neurotic said on 7:57PM 1-26-2009

One thing I missed in this whoel story, is when and how Hanbit acquired it all? And did they get anything else too?

NekoAli said on 10:13PM 1-26-2009

The short version of it is that Hanbit is a Korean based venture capitalist/bank who deals at least somewhat with MMOs. Flagship went to them for a loan at some point and put the IPs for Hellgate London and Mythos up as collateral. There was some back and forth afterwards between the two companies (which is the complicated part) and in the end Flagship couldn't pay back Hanbit and Hanbit didn't want to work with them, so Hanbit wound up with the two games.

Bandai is the North American and European publisher during the Flagship days, but apparently they couldn't come to an agreement with Hanbit for distribution, so they can no longer offer the game after the end of the month. The general thought that this was the closing of it, since Hanbit said they weren't interested in publishing in the west. Guess they changed their minds.