Category:Flagship Studios

Flagship Studios is a defunct computer game company founded by Bill Roper along with Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik; the original developers of Diablo and former high level Blizzard North executives. The core of Flagship Studios had been collaborating as a team since 1993 under Condor Studios (later bought out and renamed Blizzard North). In addition to the Diablo franchise employees, Flagship Studios staff was joined by other executives in the development of Warcraft, StarCraft, and World of Warcraft. Flagship Studios was formed following the en mass resignation of Blizzard North management following a dispute with Blizzard Entertainment parent company Vivendi. Flagship Studio's primary target platform for their games is the PC.

Flagship Studios at one time had a partnership with Namco and HanbitSoft to market and distribute Hellgate: London internationally.

In mid-2008, Flagship Studios went bankrupt and had to sell off their intellectual property. Both projects, Hellgate: London and Mythos, were shutdown, and the intellectual property was given to Comerica Bank. Hanbitsoft claimed a right to the IP and negotiated with Comerica and Korea-based T3 Entertainment to continue to publish Hellgate and Mythos in Asia. T3 is rumored to have established a new development studio in SanFrancisco to continue development in the US.

A few core members of Flagship Studios (a mix of Flagship and Flagship Seattle) has since moved on to reform as Runic Games.

Flagship Seattle
Flagship Seattle was a division of Flagship Studios. The studio was led by Travis Baldree, Project Director. Baldree previously worked at Wild Tangent as the Lead Designer on the popular free-to-play role-playing game Fate. Flagship Seattle had a diverse history of game development. Other team members had worked on titles including Total Annihilation, Dungeon Siege and SWAT 3.

Flagship Seattle was in the midst of working on Mythos when the company collapsed. Mythos was to be digitally distributed by Flagship Studios subsidiary Ping0, LLC in North America and Europe in 2007, however it never made it out of beta testing (closed and open). HanbitSoft, Flagship Studios’ partner in Ping0, was to be responsible for distributing Mythos in Asia. The majority of Flagship Seattle staff went on to reform as Runic Games.

“To be involved in the formation of Flagship Seattle is an honor“, said Travis Baldree, Project Director of Flagship Seattle. “We are sure that Mythos will put Flagship Seattle on the map, and in turn will become an integral part of the Flagship Studios experience”.