Company: Flagship Studios / Namco
Status: Canceled
Release Date: October 31, 2007
System: PC
Lifespan: 15 months
April 27, 2005:
Namco Hometek Inc. announces that Flagship studio, at the time regarded as a premium development house for having many ex-Blizzard North employees who worked on Diablo, is working on an original title called Hellgate: London. The press release went on to make statements like "With Flagship Studios' unprecedented experience, we are confident that HELLGATE: LONDON will be one of the most anticipated PC games ever"[1] and "By focusing our expertise and creative energy onto this one title, we are crafting a compelling world that combines massive amounts of randomization and
customisation to offer infinite replayability."[2]
October 15, 2007:
Numerous news sites report that Beta bugs are rampant despite the gaming being only 16 days away from release. Developers say they "Are aware of the issues some people are experiencing, but there's nothing we've seen that's any real concern to us, we're not flipping out, anyway."[3] They claim that the beta client at the time is not running at the same version as the internal version of Hellgate: London, so the beta client is not a good representation of the state of the game. They also say a "Day 0"[4] patch is ready to go, but in the end it's adds as many problems, if not more, than were previously in the game.[5]
October 31, 2007:
Despite the state of the beta, Hellgate: London is launched in North America on Halloween.
January 22, 2008:
Flagship releases their first major update to Hellgate: London called 'The Stonehenge Chronicles'