Since summer 2008, it was quiet around the old Diablo 2 project manager Bill Roper.

His "Flagship" coincided with Hellgate: London unfortunately so much on the nose, that their businesses had to adjust . Bill now works at Cryptic Studios as executive producer of " Champions Online ".

His former Diablo 2 / Hellgate: London colleagues (Max & Erik Shaefer, Travis Baldree, ...), meanwhile, continued to work on their latest game developer, " Runic Games ". Their latest "Diablo clone" Torchlight could be the weekend already alluded to the E3. The similarities to Diablo 3 are naturally seen in many places, but you must admit the developer group, of course, that the unofficial successor of Blizzard North (aka Condor), which were bought in 1993 by Blizzard. The rights to the Diablo series, of course, went on to Blizzard.

Meanwhile, Bill Roper colleagues from Gamasutra a very detailed interview in which he spoke about his past at Blizzard, Flagship and his latest studio "Cryptic". (A little long, but quite interesting to read)

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The news last week was obvious (as we already covered this) a duck.

We reported.

Flagship Studios had to because of his pure case with Hellgate: London released a majority of the employees. Bill Roper (CEO) said:

"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. [...] The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we could not sustain the size of the company any longer. "

Flagship has also reduced, since they could not with Hellgate achieve the desired success. Contrary to other claims Flagship will continue to be the rightful owner of its developments (including Hellgate and Mythos). Currently, Flagship will start but no new customers for Hellgate. Furthermore, given the existing customers (possibly because of technical problems with the dismissals), no bill.

As it goes with Hellgate is, therefore, in the stars. Presumably, Flagship must first again reorganize and find strategic partners for the support of such a great game. We will keep you up to date.

Source: http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/40030/Flagship-Studios-Still-Alive

Update:

Flagship is closed. The news was confirmed, and all employees were laid off.

Update 2:

The former employees of Flagship Seattle based studio Runic Games .

Travis Baldree and Max Shaefer lead the new company.

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