https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHXh3A3KuE

Though Redbana bought the rights and kept it alive for years as a pay-to-win MMORPG, Bill Roper’s infamous 2007 failure “Hellgate: London” is a game that time has long forgotten. Trying to be the FPS-RPG that Borderlands eventually became while also trying to recreate the magic of Diablo in a time when the prospect of a 3rd Diablo game was absolutely unthinkable, Hellgate quickly collapsed under its own expectations and hype. As a beta tester of the game back then, I can tell you that while the idea was great, the actual execution of the game was not. Nothing worked, it was hideously laggy and the uncompressed nature of the game’s inventory icons created massive input latency and visual stuttering that made it nearly impossible for anyone to enjoy.

Which shocked me when I saw the news that Hellgate was recently greenlighted on steam.

There has been no news from Redbana on what they intend to do with the game or when we’ll see it up on Steam, but that hasn’t stopped old Hellgaters from coming out of their slumber to take a few jabs at “Roper’s Folly”.

Though I’m tough on the game, it did start with a great idea. Its death is mostly the fault of Roper’s hubris, the paid/unpaid tiers of locked-off content and the extremely patchy performance that it came saddled with. These flaws could be fixed, provided Redbana took the game’s development seriously. Whether they do or not will be something owners of the original game will be keenly watching for in the coming months.