There is sad news for fans of the action shooter Hellgate: London as Namco Bandai has announced that it will be shutting down the servers for the game next year, February 2009.
The action by Namco Bandai isn’t totally unexpected as Flagship Studios, the developers for the title, sunk in July of this year due to problems at the company. An anonymous former employee at Flagship commented in a forum post on Something Awful that:
"Flagship bit off way more than they could chew and made a lot of development and structural mistakes in how they went about things. They had a lot of big dreamers on staff, but not enough nitty-gritty people who knew how to get poo poo done. It sucks, but that’s life I guess."
Many of the staff at Flagship Studios jumped ship and formed their own game company — Runic Games.
The "good news" to all of this is that from now until the Hellgate: London servers are shut down in February; online multiplayer will be free of charge as a "further gesture of support" from Namco Bandai.
[via shacknews]
