IO's communication with the community

Hitman: World of Assassination
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There’s been a few discussions on this topic in various threads recently, so thought it might be a good idea to have a thread on it to house it all.

IO’s communication has gotten absolutely horrid in 2024.

Recent examples:

  • Communicating that the servers would go into maintenance mode in March 2024 just five minutes before it happened. When your game requires a connection to the servers like WoA does, this is pathetic. At the very least there should be at least 24 hours notice.

  • June’s maintenance only had 30 minutes notice.

  • Not communicating at all that the reactivated Twitch Drops were only for specific streamers. The blog post implied they were operating the same as the new Briefcase Drop. Yes they put out a tweet on this on the 27th, but it really needed to be put in the blog post as well. It’s pissed off streamers and people wanting these items as no one thought to look at the Twitter account for information that should’ve been put somewhere else.

  • Not to mention, combatglue doesn’t regularly respond to questions on here when tagged (usually owing to the fact that logging in is something that happens infrequently - there was a period that he didn’t log in for over five weeks). There are questions posted in the February Undying Roadmap reveal thread that he was tagged in asking for clarification on ambiguous wording in the blogpost that were never answered.

As someone that loves communication and thinks there is no such thing as too much communication, I’m left feeling like IO just doesn’t care anymore. And based on other comments I’ve seen recently, its turning people away from the game at this point.

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Good idea to make it into a new thread, it helps knowing all the facts in one place. I’m not sure i understand what the problem about the Twitch Drop is, who are the “special streamers” you are referring to? It saddens me that the probably last year of content and active updating on our beloved Hitman is overshadowed by a complete lack of follow-up on the patches and the fanbase.

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I wouldn’t even be quite so bothered by the lack of communication, as long as we were getting satisfying results. We’re getting neither. It’s one or the other, IOI; you don’t get to slack on both.

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The reactivated Twitch drops (duck and suit) can only be unlocked while watching one of the streamers from IOI’s not readily accessible list play Hitman. Most of these streamers don’t play Hitman.

It wasn’t mentioned in the blog post that the reactivated drops follow different rules. In a reply to someone asking, the Hitman Twitter account said that the limited list is only for now and that all Hitman streams will count “later next [this] week”. No idea when “later” is. I don’t think we will know until after the fact.

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I remember posting similar grievances when I stopped frequenting this place a few years ago.

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I’m still very pro-IO and pro-@Combatglue because I think that unlike Travis and Clemens who didnt communicate at all in the final year we could at least potentially convince them to devote some time to the community, but my patience is wearing thin. This patch was the worst one in years, not only not fixing the various issues that have plagued the game since launch (in terms of bugs PS5 still has infinite saving, all platforms have no Freelancer coin, there’s no bloom adjustment options, some weapons have bugged mechanics, wrong descriptions or the wrong/no noise when using them but also there’s been no new content for Freelancer despite it being a big success for IO and there clearly being room for it left in the safehouse, there’s no additional escalations for Ambrose or reintroducing the old ones from 2016, no new Arcade matches in years unless you pay for them, no challenge packs since 2023, no non-reskin unlock from challenges since maybe the Codename 47 suit) but it’s added new MAJOR issues that modders managed to find and fix day one of the patch:

These aren’t minor issues like the Tranq glitch or Midnight suit bug, one of which only affects leadboards which are already cheated and the other involves wearing a suit you wont wear because Requiem’s better. Sure I would like those bugs to get fixed but theyre not big deals. This is different. This is the FIRST cutscene of the FIRST level of your game, your baby, that you’ve somehow removed from the game altogether. Then you somehow changed regular glasses into sunglasses which idk how you do that and not notice. Back in H2 I believe Travis had one big thread that tracked ALL the bugs and that led to bugs being neglected, which wasnt ideal, but now with complaints decentralized it feels like they just pick out the newest bugs from whatever thread they get them from and just fix those instead of tracking the largest bugs and which patch complaints for them showed up in

Hell the one bug they fixed in this patch, not allowing you to take the Ice Axe into a map with you, led to another bug coming out: now you can replace your gun with the Ice Axe. I actually REALLY like this as a change, I think that the gun slot should become a generic weapon slot for fibre wires, melee weapons, etc. but it also brings to mind that there’s changes we’ve suggested for years and bugs similar to this that havent been fixed. Like the sawn offs were supposed to work like this, be smugglable in the pistol slot, yet it was patched out while IO “worked on it” during H2’s cycle. now clearly they can make it work again, if this is an indication, yet theyve never fixed it but they STILL keep releasing new sawn off reskins when the #1 avenue to use them - as a replacement for the pistol for contracts or that escalation - isnt reintroduced yet

IO have a trend of doing this: try something cool, it bugs out, remove it while they fix it, never fix it or fix it BTS but we never find out because they didnt reimplement it - at least not until another bug showing up accidentally reveals they did fix it. for example: perfect run doesnt work, so they removed it. the objective could be fixed if they just added a one-second delay while exiting because the paris chopper exit works with activating that prestige objective almost every time. another example: where’s the suit option for carpathian? they said they would let you pick a suit circa 2022 when they opened it up for Patient Zero and Berlin (a fantastic change i cant praise enough!) but where is it? Hell where’s the suit picking option for the Paris auction? where’s the unlocks for the Arkian Robe, Skydiving Suit and Swimsuit? They count as suits in contracts, either make them not-suits for the purpose of making them interesting in contracts mode or make them outright unlocks pls

The game is decaying before your very eyes, shouldnt you be bothered at least a little bit that the #1 reason you are an independent AA, going on AAA, company isnt being managed right? If youre going to charge us money for new content, which most of us are happy to pay for, support the game or at the very least dont make it actively worse than the patch before it. But instead the community manager is using the fans to plug his twitch career

Edit: it’s even worse. not just the first cutscene but the post-mission cutscene. so anyone playing Hitman WoA to enjoy the story for the first time (which is half the entire purpose of the new ET, to get new people playing the full game and to get old players buying DLC when they return) will be completely lost as to the context of the mission and why they did it. this is the introduction of your deurotagonist!

I dont mean to sound snippy or entitled, but I put it this way: I love Red Dead 2, but i never have been annoyed that Rockstar didnt support RDO because RDR2 to me is a single player game. No offense to anyone disapointed in R* but to me I got my money’s worth when I bought the game, they are under no obligation to make new stuff for a game that I only spent one purchase on. However with Hitman I’ve always given what I felt I wanted out of the game and have been happy to do so because IOI were great at upholding a live service. I bought the deluxe edition because I loved Hitman 2, I wasnt happy with what I got so I didnt buy the 7DS, I was estatic with Ambrose and Freelancer so I bought the weapon packs, I wasnt happy with the support circa late 2023 so I didnt buy the Undying pack but I was happy not only with the ET but with the fact we’re getting even MORE for a almost-decade old service so I bought the Disruptor pack. I feel if IO are going to charge people for new content (or adjacent to new content, as the ET and Arcade patch is “free” this month) the line from corporation to fan is that this is what funds new stuff and a high quality of support. I feel that’s a rational thing to expect, otherwise dont charge for the game and go put out something else because why should I pay money to keep your lights on if you dont enjoy working on the game anymore?

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I cannot get over how deeply unprofessional it is for someone to use their authority as a Community Manager to designate their own Twitch channel as one of the few places people must go if they want to secure in-game rewards.

This is so blatantly unethical that I am forced to conclude a person doing so must be severely lacking in either common sense or moral fibre. Perhaps both.

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I found a comment on reddit from a few years ago that alleges that when Samir was working with Bloodhunt, it happened quite regularly with the Twitch Drops. Back then, the Drops were consistently allocated to his account plus just two others. Allegedly.

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I have no idea why IO hired him if this is the case. I get he has experience but surely a little vetting would reveal that this person isnt doing his job. @cake941 wouldve made an EXCELLENT community manager. My only hope is this is either false and he’s just getting into things or that we complain enough to get a new person hired

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Probably because, in the scheme of things, such an action isn’t a huge deal. It’s not like Hitman was set around Twitch content, it’s only a recent addition that occurs once in a while. Who cares if one of the employees sets it to where his account is one of the few. My guess is, that would be IOI’s thinking.

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oh yea that specifically is no big, but in conjuction with no communication it seems like the guy is just joining companies to sit around and play games on twitch. like the idea of getting paid to make like three posts on a gaming website every five weeks is laughing mad to me

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We don’t know exactly what IO require him to do in his role, there might be a bunch of internal work that we don’t see that sucks up so much of the time that the communication is taking the hit. Hopefully things will change and communication gets given more priority. :crossed_fingers:

I don’t think they would’ve hired someone if they weren’t actually able to do the role well.

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yea it’s best for me to calm down and i advise others to do so. reserve judgment until the end of his first year at least. im sure clems and travis took time to adjust to working for IO

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We could all be complaining about this too much because we’re used to years of being more in the loop. Let’s look at it from another perspective: IOI has had to spend the majority of its existence beholden to other companies in order to be able to afford to do their work, and only recently got their independence and are not only trying to make it on their own, but are trying to be about more than Hitman (don’t know what drove them to that particular thought, but whatever).

They’ve just come off this huge endeavor with WoA and are now entrusted to present their own take on a franchise revered around the world in Project 007, depending on that success to fully cement their viability as a studio to carry on, on their own. WoA is winding down and only a small number of devs can be devoted to the project while the rest are assigned elsewhere to help the company thrive.

Maybe they’re not necessarily being more corporate and just letting us Hitman fans fall by the wayside; maybe they’re not at a point that they just don’t care either. Maybe they’re just at a point where they have to be a little cutthroat with their priorities, and we who are clinging on to a game almost a decade old technically are just the ones who have to bite that bullet by default.

Again, we’re so used to being IOI’s sole focus for years, now where not getting what we want when we want it while mom and dad are working double shifts to keep the roof over our heads, so to speak. I don’t think this excuses the lack of communication, but it might mean that IOI aren’t just willfully ignoring us because they don’t give a damn anymore. I hope it’s something like this.

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That’s fine to me, but I also think if youre going to sunset the game do it with dignity. The game is done? Fine, say so. Release your DLCs and final year and then put out one last update that does whatever you want to leave the game off with. I can respect that, and I dont want to seem like im being snippy with you because i think your post and point is completely correct but I really want to emphasize to any IO employees that read this that they DONT have to maintain Hitman anymore

However, I think when you stop supporting a game you dont actively make new, regular content for it with additional paid microtransactions. Hitman 2’s support post-Haven was merely ET reruns and featured contracts because the dev team knew not to break the game any further with constant work on it. WoA couldve ended with The Season of the Undying patch and it wouldve been not great but adequate when it comes to necessary fixes, sure as a PS5 and Freelancer player I’d have two big massive blemishes but w/e. Now we have ENTIRE CUTSCENES missing from the game, imagine if Blood Money’s cutscenes started not working back in 2010 but they started selling microtransactions the same year?

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I can’t add anything to this post, but I agree with all of it and just want to note that I second every point you’re making here.

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Okay. So how else should such drops be made available? Or would you rather that those that missed them be out of luck? Or are you saying it should be literally any channel on the platform they should be available from? I mean, how would that work out?

I hear you complaining, but have yet to see what you feel to be a proper alternative.

As for me, I don’t see a problem with it in the slightest. Sure, it will take some effort on the user’s end that are wanting to obtain the drops. But that’s better than them being impossible to get. And like I’ve said in another topic… They’re really just useless/redundant reskins of things we already have. And this ignites a righteous indignation in you? lol.

As for the lack of communication from IOI… I think it needs emphasizing that we’re not (or shouldn’t be) placing blame specifically on the current community manager. He’s simply a messenger. If IO had any info to put out - then he’s the person to do it. And yes. The game is coming ever closer to its final days… But I’m sure that’s still quite a ways away.

So using our sense of empathy, what can we imagine is the reason for the lack of communication? Let’s make a list…

I have no interest in making a list since I’m not the one complaining. But maybe an obvious reason is simply the lack of content being made. Or maybe things are needed to be kept under wraps (hush hush) so as to not spoil what’s to come.

I would wonder if those that are finding the lack of coms to be worrying are also (registered?) to see any leak topics. Maybe there’s some stuff to look forward to from what those topics reveal.

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The issue isn’t that the Drops are back, its that combatglue made himself one of only five channels that are listed as currently able to award them. He can then make money from that by playing ads on his stream and gaining subs to his channel because he has used his role at IO to drive people to watch his channel.

Assigning them to specific streams is fine (though it creates an availability issue). Just not to yourself.

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A great analogy, and a perfect example of how badly the ball has been dropped on this Paris snafu.

For info, when the IOI Zendesk support team log on this morning and pick up my ticket on The Showstopper cutscene, my first reply to the ticket will be to link in the practical, technical notes that @AnthonyFuller included with his PC-fix mod so that whichever dev is currently asleep at the wheel has the detailed instructions for how to quickly fix this issue.

The timeliness in which IOI do or don’t fix this entirely solveable issue should be a loud message to us all as to whether or not this is a company who you’re happy to spend money with on their future titles.

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What’s wrong with how Twitch drops usually work?

Either enable them on every stream in the category (as they’re working with the “normal” Hitman Twitch drop for example), enable them for some streamers, but make sure the list is long enough and filled with people who actually stream the game, or make them available on streams from the official channel (like it works with Rocket League for example), with clearly communicated dates.

Enabling them for only a handful of streamers without clearly communicating that beforehand, and choosing streamers who either rarely stream or just don’t stream Hitman is one baffling decision after the other.

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