Hey!
I’ve noticed that from some time game starts/launch with hudge delay, approx 40 sec. First time I’ve noticed when I have game on Epic (I thought it’s platform issue), but after year when I started play on steam with totally new fresh hardware this problem still occurs.
Anyone have this same issue?
Is it just a black screen for 40 seconds or is it showing something
After when I press “Play” in Hitman launcher nothing happens for 30-40nsec, after that games launches normally. Just that delay…
I’m not sure but it could be due to some cache issues or something similar.
Check if all your drivers (especially the GPU one) are up to date. Try to reinstall the GPU driver with a clean install. Also try to clear the cache by deleting this folder:
C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\IO Interactive\HITMAN3\
Try to reinstall the game.
One last and most obvious thing you can do is to launch the game skipping the launcher by doing this:
Hope something of above works for you
Unfortunately none of the above methods worked, but it maked me think and I’ve turned off Avira Real Time protection and… problem solved 
Game launches almost instantly!I think it’s probably because of that Denuvo DRM. Anyway thanks for motivate me to search a solution 
Didn’t think of any antiviruses might prevent or delay the game to start.
Will include this option to future possible solutions.
Glad at least something worked
I’m experiencing something similar on my new laptop. It takes noticeably longer to initially launch the game. The load times for maps are the same and short though.
After pressing Play in the Launcher, the screen goes dark and it takes about 40 seconds for the IOI logo to appear. I also tried it with skipping the launcher and without any mods installed but saw no change.
I wonder if the thing that makes a difference to my previous laptop could be the graphics card and some process or setting of it? It was an AMD one before and now it’s a Nvidia.
I am not happy with AMD CPU in my laptop which handles game significantly different from Intel.
Can’t say nothing about AMD GPU as never used it, and this CPU is my first.
I am dissapointed with it and looking into swapping it to Intel CPU somehow
Don’t, the current “high-end” Intel CPUs are notorious for aging too fast. There are ways around it, but you probably won’t be satisfied, because they mainly involve making the CPU perform worse than it can.
Make it a habit to launch the game, and then go get something to drink.
You’ll be at the title screen when you return.
I also don’t like waiting, don’t get me wrong, but it’s better than having to buy another CPU after a year or two, if it really is connected to that.
I have also been experiencing this lately actually. I assumed it was mods too, but also does the same without it. Long black screen before getting to the menu. Wasn’t behaving like this before though, it would do it near instantly. A change to the game causing it maybe?
Not a big deal, I just alt tab and browse for a minute while it loads but I will try @Count.Rushmore 's cache and driver suggestions see if it fixes for me.
I always had Intel in my PCs and laptops, but this I bought was wearing only AMD.
Was doubting about it and turned out not to be wrong.
My game is working pretty much fine, but for example I can’t map button ` (~) for Inventory and noticed some bugs in mods, e.g. Readable UI breaks Freelancer, when on my desktop Intel PC game has no issues whatsoever.
So I have strong impression that AMD CPU is a culprit there