Flagship Studios, makers of flawed (yet sort of fun) Hellgate: London, and the unreleased (but promising) Mythos are apparently in a big tank of hot water right now.

Korean news site thegames.co.kr suggests that HanbitSoft is taking full control of the Hellgate: London intellectual property. To make a long story short, it seems that HanbitSoft financed HGL, and in exchange, had Hellgate: London and Mythos as sort of collateral on that loan. HanbitSoft is quoted as saying that they were dissastisifed with their relationship with Flagship Studios, and now plan to develop Hellgate with their own in-house staff (with no mention of the Mythos.)

This news also coincides with other reports from multiple sources (including a FSS staff member's blog) that says lay-offs were coming from all directions recently, at both Pingo and Flagship Studios.

A spokesperson from Flagship Studio's informed the website hellgateguru.com that the story was a big nothing, and hardly should exist at all. However, some would argue that Flagship Studio's has been less than totally honest in some of its previous assertions to the press, such as suggesting that Hellgate: London was a tremendous success, when in fact, it wasn't really that much of a tremendous success, when measuring success using common metrics for measuring such things.

For further information, check out www.flagshipped.com or www.hellgateguru.com.

It'd be a dang shame if Mythos never saw the light of day -- that game has a solid design. But something tells me people will be playing it yet.