HITMAN - Game of The Year Edition on GOG

Hitman (2016)
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In case you have purchased HITMAN and are not satisfied with the released version, you can use your right to refund the game.

It pains me, but …

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There is no justification for their behavior about this. If we want to see reform in this industry it starts here, with direct action. We shall vote with our wallets.

I will wait to hear back from GOG, hopefully to honor their promise, and I hope IOI will improve from this experience. And if IOI does make some good out of this, I may consider repurchasing it, until then though …

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A few more articles related to the GOG release, this time from Eurogamer and Kotaku AU

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Good to see. I’m posting on HMF so I’m clearly a fan of IOI’s games and anyone who has seen my posts on here will know that I have repeatedly and consistently opined that the WoA is not only easily the best ever Hitman game but also one of the greatest games of all time, so it’s not like I want to see IOI get dunked on. But the lack of a fully-functioned Offline mode is the elephant in the room in that it’s the only major weakness of the WoA, and it’s a Biggie of an issue.

Any press coverage that shines a light on the only real weakness of the recent HITMAN games has to be a good thing, because shining a light on a problem means it’s much more likely to get solved than brushing it under the carpet.

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But Hitman 3 got universal scores and the always online part was barely covered. Game journalists only care now because it caused a big uproar on GOG :man_shrugging:

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tbh I don’t expect to see IO go and spend time modifying a game with a proper offline mode that they haven’t touched in years. The game will likely just get pulled from GOG.

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That’s another chance here for IOI to make things right by putting the whole WoA trilogy entirely playable offline. Let’s hope all those reviews and comments will encourage them to do so :+1:

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It’ll likely get pulled from GOG anyway, part of the kerfuffle is the game belonging on the service in it’s current state.

That said, the offline experience and code likely has not changed much between 2016, 2 and 3, so i’d imagine updating all three games to be semi-easy. The issue would probably be legal; Warer Bros. and SquEnix have to get involved due to their contributions to WoA. They are using the same coding language, and are set up in similar ways. They can do it, and if they want some good press after the bad press, then making a proper offline mode would be a good idea.

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YongYea just released a video in which he talks about the issue

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IO Interactive really needs to come up with a decent offline mode. If they don’t do this for Hitman I can see that negatively influencing people’s buying decisions for their future games. They could easily reel me into these online shenanigans with the strong Hitman brand, but that will not be the case for 007.

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Yeah, it’s been more than a week, and frankly we need a response sooner rather than later. You’ve had a week to formulate a response IOI, and I’d strongly recommend making a statement soon @Travis_IOI .I don’t like pinging people out of the blue, but I feel it’s justified.

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Please don’t just share videos without comment, add some comments to it, what new aspects are an addition to this topic etc. It helps keeping the discussion alive instead of creating an echo chamber. :slight_smile:

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That’s a good rule, i’ll keep that in mind. I’ve removed the video as it’s mostly just a re-reading of something already said.

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Someone at IOI really needs to sit down and explain to us in detail why their always online requirement is, in their minds, necessary. They presumably have their reasons for wanting to keep it around despite players overwhelmingly disliking it.

I recall somebody at IOI saying back in 2016 that they wanted Hitman to be a ‘LIVE’ experience (whatever the hell that means), where it’s “a journey everybody is travelling at the same speed”. Ok, but why does that require a constant online connection? It’s not like Hitman is an MMO or something. I’m guessing one of the real reasons is that they’re scared of piracy; fears that were exacerbated when Hitman 2016 sold poorly. But the thing is, if someone is willing to pirate your game, you were never going to get that person to pay anyway. Ironically, they’re probably encouraging MORE piracy due to people not wanting to deal with DRMs; not to mention just souring potential customers.

I’m sorry but there’s absolutely no excuse for Hitman, a completely single-player experience, to require an online connection. I don’t care what excuses they give. All this really is is them wanting complete control over the product you’ve paid for. If I’ve paid for a product with my own money, then it should be mine and mine alone. It’s just corporate bullshit trying to take rights away from consumers. At any point, they could just shut down the servers, and Hitman as it stands now would be completely unplayable. Some might call this extreme, but to me, this is the video game equivalent of book-burning.

It’s a horrible business practice that has been received overwhelmingly negatively, yet they refuse to do anything about it. Do they not realise what a huge turn-off for customers an always-online requirment is? It’s just an awful, poisonous practice that just needs to die; and not just for Hitman. It’s toxic and hostile to consumers, and the fact that they’ve insisted on keeping it around for so long despite the community’s protests shows how little they really care about their customers.

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Why should they if you…

?

If you don’t want to talk about it in a constructive way, then please don’t at all.

I just wanted to link the original thread about this matter but got reminded it is moved away because of such posts and people being unable to discuss this.

This thread is not about the always-online requirement but about the question how the nature of Hitman’s online requirement is compatible to GOG.

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Fair enough, you got me there. But I still stand by what I said.

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The prior IOI Insider had them say it was necessary to release content for the roadmap, or words to that effect.

The general feeling of the always-online by players seems to be a resided “meh, okay”. Up until the start of 2016 and a week ago, players didn’t really complain about it during the interim. What was complained about constantly, however, was their implementation of their offline mode. Complaining about DRM schemes is simply a niche topic, despite affecting everyone.

Games as a Service are often shortened to “Live Services”.

…according to SquEnix, anyway. A publisher quite notorious for having lofty goals and targets to meet when it comes to breaking even. I’d wager the episodic model has far more to do with the games’s supposed lack of success than anything to do with pirates.

As Urben rightly said above; this is not constructive. Now for my part; this is just ranting, and definitely not helpful to discussions. If you won’t even listen to their excuses or reasoning, then that tells me you just want to be angry, no matter what. Literally a Mortons Fork that is.

The point of the roadmaps is for IOI to control how you receive unlocks and new content, being a live service makes that a bit easier to handle. It does not take away any control you have over your game. As of right now, you are free to mod the game to your hearts content, you can still play the game offline (in a crappy state, I know, but still). Your rights, statutory or otherwise, are not being breached. There’s more to ownership than being forced to be online for the “full experience”, and being on GOG is the very antithesis of this model. That is why people are angry.

Here’s the thing, they’ve had ample time to do that with 2016 and 2, and have not done so, suggesting they intend to keep the servers up for as long as reasonable. And bear in mind, Hitman 2016 is not nearly as popular as it once was. The only reason Absolutions’ servers shuttered was because they didn’t own the rights to use them anymore, and Absolution never relied on them for anything other than Contracts Mode. This is just an annoying whataboutism that doesn’t make sense in the present, as they’ve repeatedly said they’re keeping them up for the time being, so it’s highly unlikely the servers will shutter tomorrow. Stop promoting that kind of FUD here. This will become an issue in the future, but H3 isn’t done yet, and as frustratingly vague as their answers are when it comes to the future of their game, it’s clear the servers are here to stay for a while longer.

The video game equivalent of Book Burning would be pulling it from an online store forever.

Again, the general reaction i’ve seen over the years has been mild annoyance, rather than outright hatred or anything.

Sorry to rant on, and I’m aware this is likely not the best place. To end off, i’ll say something related to the thread. GOG clearly knew that this game was against their core ethos, and if they didn’t then someone in the chain of command screwed up. Someone thought that this was OK to release onto the storefront because it has a barely qualifying offline mode, and expected people to suck it up; not realising their own fostered userbase dislikes any form of DRM. It’s kind of ironic, in a way.

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As always I’m in the minority I’m sure, but I never equated “always online” with “DRM”, necessarily. The delivery model for Hitman (WOA at least) has always been a service-oriented model. I don’t know why that would change for GOG. Technically, the game is playable offline and I suppose that is all that is required for GOG to claim that it’s DRM-free.

I also strongly disagree with the idea that if you buy a game you “own” it, but that’s a completely different discussion for sure. I would be willing to bet that IOI will keep the server for WOA online for at least the next 5 to 10 years or they will make a true offline version prior to taking them down.

GOG should probably not have made the game available given the way that the always online requirement is perceived. It’s not like their management has operated in a vacuum. I don’t know what sort of scrutiny they place on games when they release them on their storefront, but they have to have at least some idea of what they’re selling. Since most people do equate always online with DRM, selling Hitman (2016) in their store was ill-advised, at best.

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You make fair points. I admit that perhaps I’m catastrophising, and I got a couple of things wrong. I should clarify that when I said I don’t want to hear excuses, I meant that I wanted them to give some actual answers and not just vague information that doesn’t give us much to go on. I wasn’t trying to just be angry for the sake of being angry; although I suppose it’s probably too early to get any concrete information on any of this shit.

I just don’t agree with the business model IOI is using (or “games as a service” in general for that matter); especially considering how ironic it is that it’s now on GOG. I just think it’s completely unecessary and even detrimental for a single-player experience. I’m not gonna say anymore though because I don’t want to derail the thread any further.

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Catastrophising is my new favourite word.

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Implementing a proper offline mode isn’t going to be a quick fix, I recall a post on the old forum from someone at IO saying the reason that the online mode was created in the first place was that they had “ambitions” for H1 that eventually got cut but at that stage the online component and the core of the game had been designed to use the servers for challenges, progression etc and it wasn’t going to be cost effective to go back and change it so they just kept it.

If they weren’t willing to go back to change things before the game launched, I doubt more than five years later a mild bit of controversy is going to make them change their mind about going back and updating a game they haven’t touched since 2017.

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