No way! No there’s no way a derailed train crashed. Nope. Don’t believe it. It’s good IOI have acknowledged the issue and are doing things about it. However I wish they could have connected the dots before they decided to partner up.
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That’s not what they’ve done – not yet at least.
The problem is, is that we all knew this was a bad deal going into this. IO are the ones that seemed to deliberately ignore that fact, so it’s not like the content was uncontroversial from the start. Removing content is fine, especially in cases like this. This isn’t bowing to cancel culture so much as it is removing something that should’ve never have happened.
From an archival standpoint, we have steam depots. It’s not getting lost to time either.
Now hours of content that i’ve made is potentially going to the trash because of this
…I dunno about you, but I think I’ve spent less than three hours on The Disruptor, and that’s including me doing wiki work. The mission is not that replayable, and man does it show.
They should’ve thought twice before recruiting him for this content!
Absolutely.
So what we should expect in the future? If any celebrity that you’ve recruited gets in court you will remove the content too? That’s a dangerous path here…
Not really? This is borderline paranoia-mongering. It wasn’t them going to court that caused this, it was the decision the court came to. Note the difference there. IO stayed quiet during the trial, and only acted once it was over.
Now this feels like giving me a nice cake and removing it from my hands
Here’s a better analogy; This mission was like giving someone allergic to raisins and marzipan a christmas fruit-cake. Raisins don’t belong in cakes, traditional or not, and adding marzipan to disguise the taste does not make it sweeter, especially since said person is allergic.
I hope that people who purchased the content will still be able to have access to it, despite the obvious wrongdoings of the character and MOSTLY, that such situation will not happen anymore in the future…
As mentioned above, that seems to be the plan for the time being.
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Well that’s good news, and the minimum acceptable i guess.
That would’ve been too bad to just pretend like it never existed after all the released content around him (DLC Pack, an interesting and UNIQUE fight mission in sgail and a whole Season dedicated to him)!
As a completionist i wish i had purchased the content before the removal, as now it’s THE ONLY DLC that i don’t own 
Looking forward to solutions to bring the target and its content back ingame anyway (maybe a rework, switch of actor) 
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I’m on your side, bro.
1st year ETs for steam players, please.
Performance Coin and Black Winter Suit… 
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It might be a case in the future that the suit unlock, items and Safehouse decorations are added back to the store, but suit and items could just be reskinned and renamed?
The Safehouse decorations could easily be added back as it was just the hot tub, fish tank/recording booth for the Gym area etc.
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its not paranoia mongering, its a valid concern about the precedent being set and the potential overreach of content removal policies in the future
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While all the other controversies surrounding McGregor aren’t great, they’re not on this same level.
To an extent, I can understand why perhaps they took the “innocent until proven guilty” route.
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he still hasn’t been criminally convicted, there’s still no definitive proof he has done it we just don’t know yet. Removing content based on allegations alone sets a dangerous precedent
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Exactly
I don’t want to think twice each time i’m playing and doing content on HITMAN, knowing that it could potentially be removed in the days after because of trials and accusations 
A dangerous path indeed!
They will need to double check their upcoming celebrities to avoid such situation in the future 
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If IO was used as a pawn it makes arguments for removing him from the game weaker, since its more conor and his teams responsiblity rather than IO’s. If IO willingly engaged in a PR strategy like this tho then i don’t even know what to say. at the same its hard to believe they wouldve been used as a pawn when the information about the trial was already public
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Huh, that’s exactly what I suggested yesterday. Am I prophetic?
He was found liable in civil court. While criminal and civil courts are different, being found liable in civil court is essentially the same as being confirmed that you did it, even if you don’t ever get held to a criminal standard. This is no longer an allegation; a court determined that he did it. Whether he did it in a criminal sense is another matter, but it’s irrelevant to anything other than his record. As far as society goes, we can say he did it, and people who don’t want to be associated with such a person for business purposes do need to take action to avoid their own reputations being brought down. IOI made the right move here.
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If IOI had researched him at all this would not have been a surprise. There are plenty of much nicer people they could have chosen, who might not have the same name branding but also aren’t rapists.
I respect taking the content down but I don’t respect choosing him in the first place. This was extremely avoidable.
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This is just not true lol, being found liable in civil court only means its more likely to be true not that it is true, the burden of proof in a civil court is way lower than in a criminal one. Treating civil liability as a criminal conviction undermines the fundamental differences between the two, there have also been cases where peope have been found liable in civil court but not in criminal court. Civil court also often deals with compensation like seen here not guilt of a crime. Like someone else already pointed out theres a reason news aren’t calling him a rapist because it hasn’t been proved beyond a reasonable doubt yet. Guilty and liable are not the same thing
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This. I hope they will just replace McGregor’s likeness and re-release all the content from the pack for those of us who haven’t purchased it until now (for one reason or another). Some of the Freelancer cosmetics are apparently very neat, and the mission is the only one that allows for a sort-of helicopter explosion kill (not to mention it has new voice lines from Bateson, unlike a certain campaign mission, *cough cough).
@Combatglue Please let us know whether/when this is being considered.
Anyways, I guess I oughta go buy The Drop and The Undying DLCs before news breaks out that that DJ what’s-his-name has been peddling dope and Sean Bean puts milk into his bowl before the cereals…
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If selling the digital content was helping him (safehouse decorations and weapons), wouldn’t it kinda screw him over for IO to just give it away for free?
Edit: I’m joking here. Removing it is the best option. I guess.
It is quite true, both civil and criminal courts have designated “fact finders” whos job is to decide what the facts are - at that point they are no longer considered allegations, they are what happened from a legal perspective.
Yes, this is because the civil court’s primary role is to resolve non-criminal wrongs between two parties, the criminal court’s is to resolve criminal wrongs on behalf of the wrong party and society. It would be unjustly arduous for the civil court to impose a standard of “reasonable doubt” and reckless for a criminal court to operate on the balance of probabilities.
Neither court is meant to be a general purpose fact finder for the general public, nor is either court interested in becoming such - the process is expensive, stressful, and invasive. It is not intended to be some sort of measuring stick regarding who does and doesn’t deserved sponsorships, content deals, etc.
However, generally speaking the civil court generally requires quite a lot of convincing to assign six figure damages - as it doesn’t just require that you drop in and say a bad word about the defendant, it requires you illustrate:
- It is more than likely the defendant did something unlawful; and
- That you definitely suffered specific types of substantial harm that can be demonstrated to the court;
- There is a direct cause-effect between the thing that the defendant did, and the harm you suffered.
In this case the cause effect was evidentally self-evident since the only thing that the jury was required to decide was did McGregor and/or Lawrence assault her - they found yes to McGregor and no for Lawrence.
That’s not casual “well that doesn’t mean anything” scenario.
Which would make it actually ideal that IO Interactive use a civil court ruling as a basis for discontinuing a business relationship, since that is a matter which relates entirely to private affairs and money.
Nobody is advocating making McGregor excommunicado with a “kill on sight” order, but it has long been established that drops in reputation, people declining to do business with you, etc are standard consequences of having particular types of events occur - such as being found to have assaulted someone who also accuses you of crimes of a vile nature.
This is the double-edged sword of having a business that relies upon you as a personal brand - when you’re hot, the money comes in - and when you’re not, it dries up. Plenty of people have lost out for doing nothing wrong, or for simply because eclipsed by other people - seems oddly specific to care about the guy who’s losing out because of a lawsuit.
Also it is relatively safe to say the Dublin court conductted a pretty thorough examination of material - moreso than most marketing/consulting firms would, and McGregor definitely got to tell his side of the story.
Yes you are correct he has not been convicted of rape, if so he would be looking at a substantial prison sentence - this is why criminal courts operate on such high standards, because the consequences are not simple monetary repairs. This high standard of evidence also makes them often inaccessible to many victims, since a lot of things can go wrong that leave things ambigious through no fault of the victim.
Notably the Director of Public Prosecutions said they did not proceed due to “not a reasonable propsect of securing a conviction”, not because they felt McGregor did nothing wrong. So they’re not happy with implying they think he’s exonherated or definitely innocent either.
So no, this is not a “based on allegations” scenario.
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Why don’t you change name and model and make the Et still playable? Call him McDonald, McBurger, McAnything Else or how do you want. To be honest, I don’t care so much if the target has the face and the name of a real person. I like the mission, I have fun playing. Before The Disruptor I didn’t have any idea who McGregor was, as for The Drop.
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i still believe multiple people here are conflating civil findings with criminal guilt when they are two distinct things. they should be considered part of a broader assessment
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I’m fine with your decision regarding McGregor and have no objections to it. That said, from a gaming perspective, I think there’s a small issue. For players who were interested in the content from that DLC (especially gadgets, weapons, and safehouse customizations in Freelancer), there’s currently no way to obtain them. It would be great if you could make these items available in a renamed pack, perhaps something like ‘The Fighter Pack,’ including the rewards that players could earn by completing the ET. In short, offer all the content without McGregor or the mission itself. Additionally, for those who purchased the DLC before this decision, it would be fair for them to retain these items, regardless of whether they played or completed the Elusive Target. Some players might have missed the opportunity to complete it, or perhaps they had just bought the game and DLC but didn’t have time to play before the ET was removed. This approach would align with how you’ve handled other DLCs, like the Makeshift Pack or Street Art Pack. @Combatglue
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It’s not really the job of the courts to make asessements for businesses if they want to continue doing business with a person/company/etc, or if customers and audiences want to continue consuming content after revelations regarding that person.
People are entitled to believe whatever they want about Conor McGregor. The restrictions on journalism outlets and major platforms for referring to him as though he is guilty of a crime come from the increased standing these institutions have in society and hence the increased risk people will assign undue prejudice to their use of particular words.
It is absolutely not, as you stated, “based on allegations”. No matter how much you insist over and over that there was not a criminal conviction, that it is not “based on allegations” will not change. The specifics of the decision are known only to IO Interactive but it is at least in part due to a finding by a civil court which examined evidence of the facts and asked a jury of 12 to find which party was responsible for what definitely happened to the victim.
We know it definitely happened because there were extensive medical records and witness testimony by the staff who treated the victim.
It is vastly more misleading to refer to this as “based on allegations” than it is for people to draw their own conclusions based on the actual facts.
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