Hellgate: London - To Pay, Or Not To Pay For ...

Hellgate: London - To Pay, Or Not To Pay For Online Multiplayer?

The answer is yes. As in, "yes" - you will be able to play Hellgate: London online for free (to a certain degree); and "yes" - there will apparently be some sort of paid service as well, for those who want more content, more modes, more features and stuff like that. The debate over paid- vs. free- online multiplayer in Hellgate: London was sparked by a Shacknews report earlier this week, which indicated that the game's (massively-)multiplayer component will be a subscription-based online service.

Since then, the website published a lengthy article about Hellgate: London, based on their CES 2007 interview with Flaghship Studios' CEO and former Blizzard executive Bill Roper, mostly detailing the game's online / MMO component. In addition to that, they also received an update from the game's co-publisher Electronic Arts, who claims that the companies involved have not reached any final decision regarding the game's online pricing scheme. So it could turn out either way.

Roper expects to have a detailed announcement on this topic in a month or two. But regardless of what they decide, he assured his fans that the game will certainly be playable online free of charge, to some extent:

"Hellgate: London is guaranteed to include some kind of free online mode that gamers will be able to access without any monetary commitment. This mode will likely not include the full MMO features of the game available to full-scale online users, though it is still unclear what kind of commitment will be needed for that level of access. "If you want lots of great continual content, and all of the services, we'll have to figure out how to do that," said Roper, pointing out that the company will need to derive revenue in some way to support a full team of content developers post-launch."

As we mentioned a few days ago, Hellgate: London should be released in Summer 2007, through a co-publishing agreement between Namco Bandai and Electronic Arts.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)