EA To Publish Hellgate London

The long-awaited release of Hellgate London, from Flagship Studios, will be handled by Electronic Arts. The Escapist newsroom reports that EA will do sales, marketing, and distribution of the game, while Namco Bandai will handle toys, novels, comics, etc. From the article: "Future games in the series were not listed as part of the deal, despite Namco's tradition of partnering with EA for publishing software in Europe. In Asia, Flagship Studios inked deals with South Korean publisher and developer HanbitSoft to handle distribution and San Jose developer Online Game Services Inc. to assist in maintaining the online world." Future games? How about they release the first one before we start talking about sequels.

Meaning

[steveo777]

It will be released far too early. It will be very buggy, it won't really resemble what the creator intended, and it will have far too many sequels.

Re:

[thepotoo]

Exactly that is far too likely to happen. EA takes some sort of sadistic pleasure (perhaps we could call it profit) from taking a decent game and creating hundreds of crappy tie-in sequels for it.

I for one was looking forward to Hellgate London (as in, checking their website every day, and googling constantly for new rumors), but, right now I'm probably going to reconsider pre-ordering it. In fact, I probably won't even buy it out of my longstanding hatred for EA (there's always bittorrent).

Nice one, Flag

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[Bieeanda]

As much as I'm inclined to agree... I can't. EA does treat most of its licenses and developers like shit, but there are noteworthy exceptions like Maxis. Given that Hellgate's being developed by the guys behind Diablo, they may have the sense to keep their hands off this golden goose too. We'll have to wait and see how the game fares after launch.

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[Clazzy]

You'd think that, but look at Westwood and Bullfrog. Where are they now, one might ask?

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[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy to say that EA "destroyed" those studios but the reality is much more complicated. And ugly. You could argue that EA didn't make enough hands-on management decisions and simply allowed those studios to burn money and run themselves into dead ends, and it'd be a good argument, because that's what happened. EA gave its purchased studios a lot of rope, and many of them hung themselves with it.

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[Endo13]

EA did destroy "those studios". In the last 10 years or so, pretty much everything EA has released has been bug-ridden garbage. Studios that previously (before they published under EA) had excellent games followed up with trash under EA. And the games that EA themselves have developed recently are the worst of the lot. It's bad enough now that I won't even try their new games that would interest me if published by anyone else.

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[Half a dent]

"It's bad enough now that I won't even try their new games that would interest me if published by anyone else."

I wouldn't go that far. But I do read plenty of reviews first before purchasing EA games.

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[WilliamSChips]

Well, I think a former Westwood employee who is now at some high level at EA is trying to save the burning corpse of Command and Conquer from Generals...

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[tlhIngan]

It will be released far too early. It will be very buggy, it won't really resemble what the creator intended, and it will have far too many sequels.

You forgot it will install spyware and have in-game ads, too.

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[Half a dent]

Of course it could have in game ads - it's set in a "real world" environment (OK so the gates of Hell haven't opened quite yet but London has billboards!).

But how many companies would want their products associated with Hell, demons and the end of the world?

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[FirienFirien]

Umm.... Nike boots of swiftness? Advertising doesn't have to be billboardy, remember...

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[Markspark]

after reading all of the comments.. i beg to differ.. I'm quite happy with the NFS series from EA.. and honestly.. sure.. i miss ye good olde days, but claiming that all EA released games are crap, are like saying that the entire Bush government is crap.. i mean.. there has to be some exception, RIGHT? RIGHT! (But sadly, Colin got fired)

You did expect this...

[__aaclcg7560]

Future games? How about they release the first one before we start talking about sequels.

I heard "Hellgate London: Global Warming" is supposed to be a good sequel.

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[IflyRC]

Is that the one where you play Al Gore and try to make as many presenations as you can while being attacked by armies of undead SUV drivers?

yep

[thejrwr]

this is kinda the same with God Of War, they where talking about GoW2 before the first was released, guess they think the game will do SOO well that they can make even more money off the game

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[Cadallin]

Well, God of War was a pretty cool game, and Hellgate: London looks pretty awesome as well, although I'll only buy it if it is ported to the 360.

Queue Vader.

[flitty]

Nooooo!... (and such, you know the joke)

Ky?

[crossmr]

Does it come with a tube of KY jelly?

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[crossmr]

Off-topic? I think that is an honest question anytime EA gets a hold of a franchise and tries to do something with it. One success in a dozen tries doesn't warrant any optimism.

Noo!

[DimGeo]

Let's hope this will not be the last game of flagship studios...

Relocation?

[KDR_11k]

I've seen US publishers force games to be "relocated" (i.e. have their setting moved) to some US city even when it makes no sense (fighting a Soviet occupation of New York instead of some country actually occupied by the SU?). Wouldn't surprise me to see this turned into Hellgate New York. Okay, the game may be a bit too far along for that, I guess they'll leave Hellgate New York, Hellgate Miami and Hellgate LA for the sequels.

Sequel talk?

[iainl]

No, this is a financial and legal agreement. The question of how this affects any possible sequel is bound to come up, just as the question of ports to hardware that doesn't currently exist, Film rights and God only knows what else. Lawyers don't just ignore these things.

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[Lex-Man82]

In the old days they were pretty good with companies, they had origin and bullfrog who would turn out great game after great game now they just seem to destroy good companies.

Soviet occupation of NY?

[Zoshnell]

Dude, that was the point of the game, y'know, whole alternate reality, soviet took over Europe and Asia already?

Unless you weren't talking about Freedom Fighters...