Following a brief outrage among Hitman 3 fans over a situation surrounding PC players needing to repurchase Hitman 2 content, both series developer IO Interactive and Epic Games have made it clear that no one will have to spend extra money to get the full Hitman 3 experience. This week's new release marks the end of IO's World of Assassination trilogy, and it is meant to house the entire trio of games in one slim package. Not only will players get a full suite of new levels and tools of destruction to play with, but they can import the levels from the previous two games if they've been playing since the beginning.
The issue with that for those playing on PC is that Hitman 3 is also the first of the trilogy to be self-published by IO Interactive, and the developer took a deal with Epic Games in order to offset those costs. That means that Hitman 3 will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store for a set period, which prevents those that have been playing the games on Steam from verifying their purchase and transferring the levels into the new game. The original Hitman's levels will come with all who buy the game new for the first ten days, but Hitman 2 never made it to Epic's storefront, and the original plan was to sell those levels at a massive discount.
This plan did not sit well with anyone, and both IO Interactive and Epic Games head Tim Sweeney have taken to Twitter to let people know that a fix is in the works. In IO's statement to the fans, it guarantees that no one will need to repurchase any content from either Hitman game to bring it into Hitman 3 if they've already purchased previous entries. Meanwhile, Sweeney took things one step further, vowing that no Epic Games Store customer should ever have to rebuy a game they bought on Steam in order to gain functionality in a new release.
The Hitman developer says it's working with its partners on a solution, which would presumably include Steam in some manner. IO already has a cross-platform account system on its website that could theoretically detect ownership of the games on Steam and Epic, as has been done with other games like Griftlands in the past. It's just a matter of creating something that is robust enough to be unexploitable but easy enough to avoid an arcane mess of logins and passwords.
It's good to see IO Interactive take control of the narrative and resolve this Hitman situation before Hitman 3 hits consoles and PC this week. Anything other than a swift response could have tarnished the reputation of what has otherwise been an excellent trilogy of games that both players and critics can't get enough of. With IO moving on after this release to a game based on James Bond and other potential future projects, this iteration of the franchise deserves a stellar sendoff, and all indications point to players getting exactly that when the game releases on Wednesday.
Hitman 3 will be available for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on January 20, 2020.
Source: IO Interactive, Tim Sweeney