Flagship Studios

"Flagship Studios" Speaks

2008-08-20T23:47:12Z

There have been a lot of rumors floating around the World Wide Web in regards to what will happen to Mythos and Flagship Studios. We've posted a lot of previous news about the layoffs and how Flagship Studios is basically shut down.

Recently two very in-depth interviews were done, one with Bill Roper and another with Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer of Flagship Studios, answering many questions that I'm sure most of us have wanted to know the answers to. Check below for a few quotes and at the bottom for the link to the full interviews.

GFW: You've had an interesting last year, to say the least. So, how the hell are you, Bill?

BR: Doing OK, all things considered. Yeah, alive and breathing -- better than the alternative. It's definitely been an interesting six to eight months since the Hellgate launch. Been a lot of things going on since October. Seems like longer than that. I spent a lot of hours in the office, sleeping on the floor, phone calls all across the world, working on stuff....

GFW: So let me ask you one question about the office right now. Is there still a Flagship office that has employees in it?

BR: Sort of? I know it's a weird answer, but, yeah, we do. We announced [on July 11] that we had to lay off the vast majority of the employees, but there's still a small handful of the founders working on things. Really, our focus now has been on how we best take care of the guys that aren't there anymore and help them find jobs with other teams. We handpicked everybody, both on the game-content side and the online-technology side. So we're really working to get those guys placed. Then, past that, we've been spending a lot of time trying to take care of our creditors and other fiscal challenges. But it's definitely at the point where we're not exactly trying to plot a gigantic turnaround with a bright, rosy future at Flagship. It's unfortunately more the other side of the coin.

GFW: So is it really a matter of how to end it gracefully? Is that fair to say?

BR: Yeah. It really is. We're working hard on how to end gracefully. Obviously, we've got people we owe money to, so we're doing absolutely everything in our power to get those people the money we owe them, whether that's on an institutional side, lenders, or, equally as important, with our employees who aren't there anymore.

GFW: OK, so let's back up and talk a little about exactly what went down here.

BR: Well, we've basically spent the last eight months, after we shipped Hellgate and had Mythos in development, looking at what the next phase was for Flagship. For us, the main concern was trying to find the right partnership. We knew that we had to take the step past just project funding into studio funding. We were really open with our guys about that and said that this is what we're pursuing. So we started that, talking with potential investors, other companies, publishers [and] trying to find the right partnership that would allow us to put the proper focus on making the best games we could.

GameCyte: So when did this process begin?

Travis Baldree: We started getting ourselves reformed pretty shortly after the closure of Flagship, and it took us several weeks to actually get it completed, but we started pretty much right away. All of our team knew that they wanted to stay on.

Max Schaefer: I think that was the most important thing — that everyone on the team wanted to keep working together, and however that had to happen, we were going to do it.

TB: We all really believed in what we were doing with Mythos, and wanted to get right back to doing that again, and get — if not Mythos itself, something along those lines — to market.

GameCyte: And you say Flagship Studios did close?

TB: Max, are they still kind of open?

MS: It’s barely open. It’s just open enough to take care of the final affairs, but for all intents and purposes it’s closed down.

GameCyte: We’d figured as much, but all we’d had was a press release saying “We’re still open!” “We still have our IP!” It’s hard to tell what’s actually going on.

TB: It’s a little bit of a new experience for all of us. (chuckles) We don’t exactly know the ‘proper’ way to close down a company. First and foremost, we’re just trying to take care of the debts and the employees in an orderly fashion, so Bill [Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios] and one or two other people have stuck around and are doing their best to get that done before we move on in different directions.

Flagship Seattle becomes Runic Games

2008-08-12T01:50:49Z

After the Hellgate: London-creators Flagship Studios sank about a month ago, there's been a lot of speculation about the future of former employees. The studio that was Flagship Studios Seattle, who were developing Mythos, has announced that they've created Runic Games. The new studio is lead by Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer. Whether or not they continue development on Mythos is so far not known, but information regarding coming projects is promised to be announced soon.

Runic Games website

T3 taking over Hellgate: London and Mythos?

2008-08-04T21:13:26Z

According to newly published job openings, the Asian T3 Entertainment is about to establish a new studio in San Francisco, which shall continue the development of the almost decimated Flagship Studios Hellgate: London and Mythos. This is all according to Gamasutra.

Flagship was forced to almost ask the whole staff to leave in the beginning of July due to economical difficulties, and if the old Blizzard-profiles such as Bill Roper and the brothers Schaefer will come along from Flagship is currently unclear; yes, the situation is still quite a mess, especially since Namco Bandai has involved itself in Hellgates continued operation without giving any clear information.

For now, there's a lot of speculation going around, so don't read too much into it.

Flagship Studios is Still Operating, Barely

2008-07-16T19:45:07Z

Recently many people were shocked by the news of Flagship Studios, the company behind Hellgate: London and the in development Mythos, were closing doors.

We can now report that they are still operating, barely.

Press Release

Flagship Studios has announced today that despite rumors to the contrary, the company is still operating.

“It is with deep regret that I must announce that Flagship Studios has laid off most employees. However, the core management and founding team members are still at Flagship.” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer.”

Flagship Studios owns the rights to all its technology and IP, including Hellgate: London and Mythos. Due to the current situation, Flagship will not be taking any new subscribers for Hellgate: London, and all current subscriptions will not be billed.

Flagship wishes to extend their heartfelt thanks to those that have supported the company and games over the past five years.

This is such a shame, Mythos was very fun and it was only becoming better and better. It seems unclear on what's going to happen next. Time will tell.

Flagship Studios staff fired and company closing

2008-07-13T07:51:09Z

We decided to wait with posting about this until we had a better confirmation. It's pretty much confirmed now, but several things remain unclear. They will hopefully be clarified "soon". Stay tuned for further information.

Yesterday Gamasutra posted that Flagship Studios, the company behind Hellgate: London and the in development Mythos, has fired a great amount of people due to economical difficulties. At the same time Hellgate Guru reported that the Korean HanbitSoft is on the way to take over the games intellectual property and want to develop the game (and maybe also Mythos) themselves. Recently VE3D confirms that Flagship, which was founded 2003 by key people behind the Diablo-games, closes doors.

A person that claims to be a former Ping0 employee posted the following at the SA Forums:

Former Ping0 employee checking in here. I feel bad for some of the talented guys on the staff who busted rear end to try and get a game out on a ridiculous schedule, but I think we all kind of saw this coming after the game came out and basically bombed. 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. I didn't always agree with the decisions of the leadership, but it doesn't surprise me at all to hear that three of them (probably Roper and the Schaeffers) dug into their own pockets to pay people. Nothing about them, Max Schaeffer in particular, ever made me think they were less than standup guys.

I think it's less that they aimed too high than that they tried to aim that high and do it quickly, and they didn't do anything the easy way. They had their own server architecture, their own client, their own chat, their own graphics engine, their own everything basically. Plus they wanted a game that could support thousands of concurrent connections with no downtime, had an engaging single-player campaign, and could support an ongoing, persistent world. It was like picking everything that's hard to do in a game, and then putting it on a brand-new company (two of them, really) with people who hadn't worked together before.

Plus you had Ping0 doing the back-end and multiplayer, working off a forked codebase, and trying to make sure that what they were designing was open enough that it could be marketed to other companies. And then Mythos, with a team working out of Seattle under Travis Baldtree (who is a loving genius, by the way), which had to fit into things somehow even though it wasn't as much of a priority. It was just a really chaotic situation all around. Hopefully the talented guys I met there will bounce back quickly, it's a lovely time to be unemployed in the bay area.

Read more at VE3D

Comerica Bank Finances Flagship Studios

2008-03-28T01:09:28Z

Innovative Independent Videogame Finance Transaction Finalized

Los Angeles, CA (March 26, 2008) - Flagship Studios, the San Francisco-based creator of both Hellgate: London™ and Mythos™ for PC, and Comerica Bank, a Texas-based regional bank, today announced that they have closed an innovative finance transaction to support Flagship’s continuing development of AAA and online game franchises.

Using an independent film financing model as its basis, Comerica Bank has created a multi-million dollar facility backed by the sale and distribution rights to Flagship’s game franchise “Hellgate: London”.

"By following a model similar to independent film financing, we are able to directly finance ongoing content for our online games without relying upon a publisher’s investment," said Steve Goldstein, Director of Business Development and General Counsel, Flagship Studios. "As the PC game business makes the transition from the boxed retail model to the online model, alternative financing will become a cornerstone of expanding the industry."

"We are pleased that Comerica Bank could build on our expertise in financing films to help meet the financial needs of Flagship Studios," said Jeff Colvin, Senior Vice President with Comerica Bank, from its Entertainment Group offices in Century City.

Jeff Colvin and Todd Steiner structured the transaction on behalf of Comerica. Joshua Grode and Sam Kozhaya of Liner Yankelevitz Sunshine & Regenstreif, LLP led the legal team on behalf of Comerica. Andrew Katz of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, LLP represented Flagship Studios in the transaction.

About Flagship Studios

Flagship Studios is a creator of innovative entertainment software, designing games that focus on ease of play, replayability, and fun. The studio was formed in 2003 by former executives and developers from Blizzard North® and represents the creators of the worldwide, best-selling Diablo® franchise. With members that are renowned within the gaming industry, Flagship Studios and its Flagship Seattle division embody a team that has worked together for over a decade and have numerous #1-selling games and multiple Game of the Year awards to their credit. Website: http://www.flagshipstudios.com.

About Comerica Bank

Comerica Bank is a subsidiary of Comerica Incorporated (NYSE: CMA), a Fortune 500 financial services company based in Dallas, and strategically aligned into three major business segments: the Business Bank, the Retail Bank, and Wealth & Institutional Management. Comerica focuses on relationships and helping businesses and people be successful. Comerica Incorporated is one of the 20 largest U.S. banking companies, with $62 billion in assets at Dec. 31, 2007. Website: http://www.comerica.com.

About LYS&R

Liner Yankelevitz Sunshine & Regenstreif, LLP is a full-service law firm with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, practicing in the areas of intellectual property litigation, business and entertainment litigation, products liability, real estate, business and financial crimes defense, mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy and creditors' rights, tax and estate planning, and financial services litigation. The firm was recently named one of the best places to work in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal. Website: www.linerlaw.com.

About Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp

Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP, with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C., is celebrating its 100th Anniversary in 2008 as a full-service law firm. Throughout its history it has provided cutting edge litigation and transactional legal services to the entertainment industry, including in intellectual property, financing, mergers and acquisitions, and securities matters. MSK’s Entertainment and its Labor and Employment attorneys have been recognized nationally for their achievements. The firm is also pleased to have been recognized as one of the best mid-sized companies to work for in California. Website: http://www.msk.com.