Flagship Studios Officially Closes Its Doors

After several attempts to try and save the flailing Flagship Studios, COO and co-founder Max Schaefer, has admitted that “for all intents and purposes it’s closed down”.

Speaking in a GameCyte interview, Schaefer noted several deals to try to save the company fell through and that at present, the studio was only working on taking care of “final affairs” and nothing more.

“We were in very advanced negotiations with a couple of people for deals that would have kept Flagship open and would have kept everything running. And in fact, for a good while it was looking like a near-certainty that one of those would have come to fruition.

In the end, it was just too entangled to get a good deal in place, and so we had to close down. It was really kind of a wrenching, horrible period actually, and we learned a lot from it. We’d do things differently next time for sure.

We all were up all night, every night, not getting any sleep, working every day trying to get it to work out for everyone, and in the end it just didn’t.”

You may recall that the creators of Hellgate: London and the upcoming Mythos have been rumored to be in dire straits since June when programmer Guy Somberg posted a depressing piece on his personal blog about employees leaving the studio “in droves”. After retractions, denials, lay-offs and rumored buyouts, Asian publisher T3 Entertainment took over the developmental reins of Hellgate: London and Mythos in July and plan on trying to keep the MMOs going.

I never played Hellgate: London, but I was a participant in the beta for Mythos, and I have to say that I enjoyed it rather well. Hopefully, T3 can turn things around for both MMOs, especially for those who actually enjoyed Hellgate: London.