Hitman 3 is off to a rough start

You’ve probably heard this one before. An animated game is coming to the market. It requires some degree of internet connection. Everyone flock to play from day one, only to hit a series of frustrating obstacles. Online connectivity is fragile, even functional. There are issues with save data and character progression. Some gamers go into high-end versions – say, an “Ultimate” edition – and have trouble accessing the content they paid for. The developer triggers a series of apologetic tweets, says he acknowledges the situation and “looks into it”, and posts an FAQ covering the most common issues with a series of responses that are thin at best and vague, at worst.

Launching the game, in other words, is a mess.

The disaster of the day is not a destiny or one Diablo or one Division. His Hitman 3, the latest in IO Interactive’s recent series of interactive Instagram posts, released this week across a host of platforms.

Oh man. What happened this time?

Hitman 3The problems allegedly started before the launch. IO Hitman Games have always had an online element, which relies on a persistent internet connection to track your progress. KotakuRiley MacLeod told me that when he was review the game, connectivity would disappear. As far as he knew, it had no major influence on the way he played. (Examining the game for PC Mag, Mike Williams encountered equally wobbly connectivity.) You can technically play Hitman 3 offline, but you will miss some unlocks.

It doesn’t sound so bad.

In a vacuum, no, that wouldn’t be a problem. It’s common for online games to have server issues before launch. Hitman 3The servers were operational (on paper) during the review period, but still encountered problems. And keep in mind that such issues existed despite the fact that only a small population of critics – rather than the larger gaming audience – had access to the game.

Server issues persisted during the game’s official launch on January 20. Bonus points if you saw this one coming.

That’s not all. Hitman 3 technically allows players to carry over their progress – both in terms of character progression and unlocked levels – from previous games in the World of Assassination trilogy Hitman and Hitman 2. This process, too, did not go as smoothly as expected.

Hitman games are defined as much by their location as anything else. Previous games have sent Agent 47 to posh destinations like Marrakech, Morocco; Hokkaido, Japan; Miami, Florida; and Sapienza, Italy, which isn’t a real place but, come on, might as well be a carbon copy of Positano, Sorrento, Praiano, or any vacation hotspot on the idyllic Amalfi Coast. If you had Hitman 2, you can import all unlocked levels into Hitman 3 by downloading expansion passes called Access Packs at no additional cost. (Those who had Hitman or Hitman 2 on disk had to go through an even more complicated download process. It is a whole.)

Trying to find these Access Packs in each console’s proprietary storefront, however, might show them off at the price. Instead, players had to navigate to Hitman 3Store tab through the game’s main menu. But even that didn’t guarantee success. Some Xbox gamers were unable to access the first game’s access pack entirely, even if they followed the directions all the way to the tee. IO said a “resolution” is in preparation.

PC gamers, meanwhile, faced mixed messages whether or not PC gamers should redeem Hitman 2 on the Epic Games Store, where Hitman 3 is a timed exclusive. Currently, Hitman 2 is not available on the Epic Games Store, but you can purchase the Hitman 2 Gold Edition Access Pack—Which includes the base game and its add-ons – with an 80% discount until February 3. In other words, if you have Hitman 2 on Steam and want to play the levels of that game in Hitman 3, you will have to pay again. IO said a fix is ​​in progress. We don’t know why the Hitman 2 The Gold Edition Access Pack is not completely canceled. (Kotaku contacted IO representatives for comments.)

And then there is the actual data transfer. If you played Hitman 2, you can transfer your player profile – your XP rank, your master levels, your unlocked combinations, things like that – into Hitman 3. IO Interactive has even set up a dedicated site allowing players to transparently regulate the process. The site almost immediately buckled under stress, with some players encountering error messages. At 2:57 p.m. ET, IO Interactive acknowledged the problem, writing, in a Tweeter, that anyone seeing a failure notification has been “queued on [their] fine and processed. You can’t do anything more.

“We have taken steps to stabilize the progress of the postponement,” IO wrote in a Faq Thursday morning. “We are cautiously optimistic that we will avoid further problems and we are ready to continue.[s] smooth as we hit rush hour. “

And then there is the problem of intergenerational improvements. It’s no secret that upgrading a game from its PlayStation 4 version to its PlayStation 5 version is already a process of confusion. Hitman 3 throw an extra key in it. In some cases, PlayStation players have reported issues using a PS4 disc of the game to upgrade to the PS5 version, despite IO pre-launch promises declaring that next-gen upgrades would be free. Today’s FAQ asks players to download the PS4 version to their PS5 first, then head to PlayStation Store (console only) and download the Hitman 3 Disc Upgrade Edition.

On top of all that, there are some little bits of DLC that apparently don’t even carry over at all. By IO, the Requiem Pack– which, fun fact, featured a white rubber duck – is currently “AWOL”.

Wow, okay, I’ll take it back. It’s a lot. Why does this always happen?

he always happens, doesn’t it?

Talk to Kotaku in 2019, developers shaken a list of common issues that could potentially disrupt an online game, including crashes, system failure, code glitch, unexpected influx of players, or even bugs on an individual player’s machine. Developer Rami Ismail, from Vlambeer, compared these launches to Mini metro, the formidable minimalist management simulation on the construction of accessible public transport in large metropolitan areas.

It’s also important to remember that problems like this are not universal. (See: All people who respond to articles on Cyberpunk 2077 with a few rants about how the game performs wonderfully on their billion dollar platform, and that it’s the game of the year, and why is it so bad anyway, what’s the big deal? ) For some people Hitman 3 players, everything is peach and sauce. For others, the whole ordeal has been an exercise in frustration.

And it’s a tale as old as time anyway. Mass Effect: Andromeda launched like a mess buggy, before BioWare turned The boat around and turned the game into, if not the best Mass Effect, a solid standard entry. Similar things could be said about Halo: The Master Chief Collection–who’s a freakin blast these days-or Diablo III. And everyone knows the No Man’s Sky redemption ark now. East Hitman 3 the next chapter in a long saga of now great games that spat at launch? Only time will tell if IO can do this job.

No more failures at launch