January 31st, 2009, will be the last day for Hellgate: London, Namco Bandai announced today.
Hellgate: London was originally developed by Flagship studio which was then closed down in July, transferring the responsibility for the game's operation to Namco Bandai. Namco Bandai tried to keep the game alive, but it seems that they've failed and now they decided to axe it.
After much pre-release hyping, Hellgate: London suffered from technical and gameplay issues from day one. "I think the problem with the game was that by the time it got really good, we were four to six months post-release", David DeMartini of EA Partners was quoted earlier. "That was too late; we'd lost the fanbase."
Hellgate: London will continue to be available to play for free until its servers go offline on January 31.