Namco-Bandai currently owns the rights to publish Hellgate: London in Japanese and North American territories. Their version of the game closed early this year in January 31st.
HanBitSoft owns the publishing rights to South Korea and other smaller Asian territories. They are still currently running the game on a free-to-play with cash shop model in their territories.
And since Flagship closed down their servers HanBitSoft has been trying to get their version onto English speaking shores. After a short confrontation with Namco-Bandai, HanBitSoft officially announced that they will not be able to serve players for us.
It seemed all hope was extinguished afterwards... until now. Reporters for the 4gamer.net Japanese gaming website recently attended the G*Star convention in Korea and during a interview with PR & Legal Team Manager BK Yoon the question popped up, will Japanese gamers have a chance to play in our own cities? And thus it was revealed they are still in the talks with Namco-Bandai.
If the talks are successful there will be a good chance we might see the game in North America as well since Namco-Bandai owns the publishing rights for both Japan and North America. Futhermore if HanBitSoft is bringing the game to English territories it will likely be free-to-play now (double-win).
Until this slim possibility becomes a fact or if it even does we can only watch from a far as HanBitSoft prepares for the beta releases of their updates.
Original 4Gamer article may be found at http://www.4gamer.net/games/020/G002047/20091204058/
