Hellgate: London was originally released on Halloween in 2007. I was pumped. I had a collector's edition waiting for me at my local game store, and my parents had offered to buy me the lifetime subscription as a late birthday present. It was pretty much the amalgamation of everything I had ever wanted in a video game. It was also the first game I ever played during its beta phase. There had been a lot of issues during the beta, but I was sure Flagship had cleaned them up in time for launch. I took it home, installed it, and twenty minutes into the game, it crashed. I fired it up a second time, and I only made it another ten minutes before it gave me a memory error of some sort, crashing again. Patches were released at least once a week, but only for the multiplayer component. The single-player component was always two or three patches behind. Such is the story of Hellgate. A game that had enormous potential, but also seems to have been cursed from the onset.
A 1st/3rd person Diablo type title that takes place in a futuristic and post-apocalyptic London, Hellgate had no real reason to fail. It was developed by former Blizzard employees, contained plenty of loot, skill points, and hellish monsters, and was published by the gaming giant EA. What could go wrong? Well, for one, the game was released in what I would call a late alpha/early beta condition. Bugs ran rampant, content was clearly unfinished (they used the same three tilesets for most of the game), and the game was not feature-complete. A faction ranking system was in place, but did nothing. In other words, it was a mess. Some people blamed Flagship studios for dropping the ball. I know that at one point they utilized the time and resources necessary to get a playable build onto the Xbox 360, despite having no plans to port it over. Some people said that EA forced Flagship to release it, despite its unfinished state. I don't know what really happened, but I would imagine it was a combination of mismanagement and lofty goals. Flagship had even built their own engine, "Prime," to be used as Hellgate's foundation. Admirable, but I wouldn't recommend writing a new engine when you have a brand new, untested IP on the line. The game, and Flagship studios, crumbled in a matter of months.
Fast forward to 2011. T3Fun, a Korean developer, had the rights to Hellgate. They re-released it as Hellgate Global, changing the game to a (mostly) free to play format, adding an item shop, and updating the game with the content that Flagship had actively been working on when they went under. Things had seemed to take a turn towards good fortune. But then, after releasing the Tokyo expansion (which was, once again, developed by Flagship and merely implemented by T3Fun), T3Fun ceased all real support of Hellgate: Global, outside of the occasional server maintenance. According to what I've read, T3Fun did not acquire the rights to access the Prime engine's source code, or something along those lines. Therefore, they were able to implement the completed content that Flagship couldn't, but couldn't add any new content, bug fixes, and general updates of their own.
It has been almost three years since Global was updated. The Hellgate forums on T3Fun's website do not function. The servers are ghost towns. The supposed sequel that was in development was shut down in July because the team was unfamiliar with the Unreal engine (which is a joke, right?). Then, a few days ago, there was a halfhearted update on Hellgate's Facebook stating that Hellgate was on Steam Greenlight. This has caused absolute chaos a midst what is left of the Hellgate community.
Misinformation is running rampant. People think its a new game. People think its an indie game. People think its a sequel. And, worst of all, there are some people that think this means new content/updates for Hellgate: Global. Unfortunately, if any of these people had followed this fiasco as long as I have, they would know this is a last ditch effort to make some money off of the in-game cash shop before the game dies entirely. If I'm wrong, then great. But there haven't been any updates in three years. I'm not wrong. T3Fun did the same thing with Mythos, the other Flagship IP. They bought it, implemented the finished content, and then let it run its course until the servers were shut off.
Now, to the crux of the matter. These types of situations are exactly why we need to educate ourselves as consumers. Research the company developing a game. Research the game's history, if it has any. Read comments, articles, and other bits of information so that you know what's going on. T3Fun conveniently left many of these details off of their Greenlight page, but posted the original Hellgate trailers, and are using the Tokyo expansion as the main image for the Greenlight page, making some people think it is a new Hellgate title. The bottom line, is that knowing what you are buying before you buy it is incredibly important. And, I have to say, most games and their development history are not nearly as complicated or as much of a cluster-fuck as this has been, so we have no excuse for not doing our research on titles before spending our often hard-earned money on them. If a developer states multiple times that a game will not contain a particular feature, we have no reason to bitch when the game does not contain that feature. The buyer beware.
I would like to make a special mention of the folks over at Hellgateaus.net. I was one of the first members over there, and it has been the best place to go for Hellgate: London mods and information for several years now. When it comes down to it, Hellgate was the game we always wanted. We wanted to see it succeed with all of our hearts. But sometimes, things don't work out the way you want. The majority of the Hellgate community is a good group of people, who all happen to be extremely passionate about the same thing.
Hellgate gave me my first real insight into the gaming industry. Up until that point, I had just kind of played games. It was the first time I had seen a studio struggle first hand with completing something into which they had poured every fiber of their beings, and it was painful to watch. Members of Flagship would post replies to our questions and concerns, and I would say "a developer, talking to me?" But then they would say how they had been up for over 48 hours straight trying desperately to crush a few more bugs. Towards the end, there were stories of some of the employees sleeping on the floors of the office so they could take round the clock business calls to try and save the company. My seeing this side of the industry taught me a lot, but it also destroyed part of my childhood; part of the wide-eyed wonder I had always felt when playing games was gone.So, with these latest developments, I think its time to let go. There will some day be a sequel or a spiritual successor that will hopefully live up to the potential of the Hellgate IP, but until then, let's take a break. I've been riding this particular roller coaster from the beginning. I think I'm ready to get off now.
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