Hitman 3 developer Io Interactive apologizes for expensive Steam launch with free upgrades

[Daniel Sims]

In brief: This week, Io Interactive announced a promotion to appease fans who didn't respond well to Hitman 3's launch on Steam. Early buyers can get some extra content for free from now through most of February.

When Hitman 3 was first released on Steam last week, it immediately started getting bad reviews from fans angry at its price. Despite coming out on Steam precisely a year after it did on the Epic Games Store, Io still priced it at $59.99, which, to be fair, is still the MSRP on Epic right now.

In response, Io is now letting anyone who bought the standard edition of Hitman 3 before February 19 upgrade to the Deluxe Edition—usually $89.99 on its own—for free. Anyone who purchased the Deluxe Edition or the Hitman Trilogy before that date gets the Seven Deadly Sins expansion season pass for free. Users only need to launch their copies of Hitman 3 for the upgrades to apply.

It's not the first time the game has encountered controversy. When Hitman 3 launched on Epic, Io initially said those who owned the previous two games on Steam would have to repurchase them on the Epic store to import the levels from those games into Hitman 3. This stipulation garnered harsh backlash. A month later, the studio implemented a workaround that let users import the levels at no extra cost by linking Steam, Epic, and IOI accounts.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/93160-hitman-3-developer-io-interactive-apologizes-expensive-steam.html

 

[winjer]

Price is still too high.

 

[Sausagemeat]

I love how people are slowly waking up to steams bullshit. I’m personally super glad they no longer have as much of a monopoly as they used to. Although tbf in this case it’s the same price on Epic.

I just installed Hitman 3 via gamepass. So I won’t be giving either company any money for this game.

 

[Burty117]

I just installed Hitman 3 via gamepass. So I won’t be giving either company any money for this game.

Giving them no money huh? Didn't realise gamepass is free...

 

[Sausagemeat]

Giving them no money huh? Didn't realise gamepass is free...

Who said gamepass is free?

 

[Aus spot]

Who said gamepass is free?

Read the full quote. Makes sense then.

 

[Shear]

I love how people are slowly waking up to steams bullshit. I’m personally super glad they no longer have as much of a monopoly as they used to. Although tbf in this case it’s the same price on Epic.

I just installed Hitman 3 via gamepass. So I won’t be giving either company any money for this game.

What Steams bullshit?

 

[scavengerspc]

Despite coming out on Steam precisely a year after it did on the Epic Games Store, Io still priced it at $59.99, which, to be fair, is still the MSRP on Epic right now.

The biggest problem of all was bowing to the soaked diaper crowd.
Don't like the price? You are free to move on.

What Io should have done was draw a detailed map on where they can stick their complaints.

 

[winjer]

Don't like the price? You are free to move on.

That's exactly what people are doing on Steam.
The game sold an estimated 50.000 units and has a peak player count of 2100.
For a AAA game, these numbers are pathetic.

 

[Ashford]

Digital media access is a right vested exclusively with the publisher. They can sell their product for a million bucks if they want to. An individual has zero right to access the product if they don't fork over what the publisher wants. If the volume of sales is not what the publisher expected, they will lower the price to attract the next customer tier that is willing to pay just a little less .. process repeats until they get where they want to be or the products' perceived value depreciates below what it would cost to sell it.

At least that's how I was taught commerce.

 

[Adhmuz]

That's exactly what people are doing on Steam.
The game sold an estimated 50.000 units and has a peak player count of 2100.
For a AAA game, these numbers are pathetic.

I'm more surprised anyone is even buying it on Steam for full price right now, the game is a year old, it has been on sale before via Epic and it will be on sale via Steam soon enough. Anyone who has waited this long to play the game via Steam can likely wait a few more months for it to go on sale on their platform of choice. Not like the vast majority of Steam users don't have plenty of games they can play in the mean time.

What Steams bullshit?

Who Steams their bull's ****?

 

[scavengerspc]

What Steams bullshit?

I guess we can start with taking nearly double from publishers that their competition does.

 

[Shear]

I guess we can start with taking nearly double from publishers that their competition does.

As a consumer. I don't give a **** at all how much a cut steam takes. As far as I am concerned 30% is industry standard. Sony and MS take the same cut. I like Steam. Steam is nice. I like all my games to be in one place. There are soooooo many games out there that I still haven't played, so when I see something coming out exclusively on Epic I go "oh thank God it will take another while for it to get to steam anyways".

 

[scavengerspc]

As a consumer. I don't give a **** at all how much a cut steam takes.

Nothing wrong with that at all, but its not all about you. A lot of people like that about Epic and others. Besides, you asked.

 

[Shear]

Nothing wrong with that at all, but its not all about you. A lot of people like that about Epic and others. Besides, you asked.

Well, you said steam bullshit. Which is the same "bullshit" that is on PS and Xbox. So it's not bullshit, it's industry standard.

On top of it. The games aren't cheaper on Epic, you know since the devs get more money you'd think they'd pass some of it to the consumers too but nah. The games also aren't "better" because they can spend "more" money on it due to a bigger payout.

So then I am faced with this. I have to get the game for the same price as I would anywhere else but on a platform that doesn't have nearly half of the features steam has. Ha. Sounds like a great deal for a consumer.

 

[Burty117]

I guess we can start with taking nearly double from publishers that their competition does.

Well first of all you're wrong, they take a higher cut until a certain sales threshold is hit then they charge less.

Also, I don't know if you've been reading the news but these studios and publishers have been going for billions. They aren't short on cash, it's not like Steam is rinsing them, As I keep having to remind people, Steam aren't just a store, they also allow an easy way for Mods to be installed and browsed, they allow remote play, you can share the game with others on your friends list, they allow the developers to host the game for free if the devs just sell the game keys.

And as Shear said, we as the consumer shouldn't care, it would be different if these dev studios weren't worth billions but they are, so it just doesn't matter. What matters more is the different features and pro's / con's of each store and whether you like it or not, Steam doesn't actually have a competitor, the other stores are simply that, just stores, a place to buy and launch games, nothing else. Steam is a completely different beast.

 

[scavengerspc]

Well, you said steam bullshit.

No I didn't. Saugemeat did, and you asked what bullshit. I gave an example.
And it is one reason I shop Epic first. That plus Epic is the only front end where I get full download speed.

 

[Shear]

No I didn't. Saugemeat did, and you asked what bullshit. I gave an example.

Oh, my bad. Sorry!

 

[DubiousFishHook]

20 years ago Steam was referred to as "schteaming pile of ****" Now it's "epic suk I dont want hundreds of free games because I cba to write down a password" Or "monopoly is bad so I want all my games in 1 place".......

 

[Burty117]

20 years ago Steam was referred to as "schteaming pile of ****" Now it's "epic suk I dont want hundreds of free games because I cba to write down a password" Or "monopoly is bad so I want all my games in 1 place".......

Over 20 years Steam is the only store that got better and provided more services (for free).

All other stores just stood still.

 

[amghwk]

Those days, we only had 1 complete game version that comes in a box. Now, there are "standard edition", "deluxe edition", "ultimate edition", and ....... If there are more words available to them, they would use them all too.

 

[amghwk]

And I can't stand the newer Hitman games because of the obnoxious American slang spoken by every local people. For example the Bangkok mission...if they couldn't include the local language, they should have at least tried to implement some degree of local slang of English usage, not the flagrant American dialect spoken by even the cleaners....

Hitman 2 Silent Assassin and even Codename 47 were so much better in terms of localizations and variations.

 

[Adhmuz]

No I didn't. Saugemeat did, and you asked what bullshit. I gave an example.
And it is one reason I shop Epic first. That plus Epic is the only front end where I get full download speed.

Is this a consistent issue you are having with Steam's download speeds?

I've noticed download speeds do vary title to title and if a large title has recently released speeds can be a little slower. But you know, not getting my full Gbit download speed and only get 75% of it isn't a huge deal, however it does hit my cap often enough.



As for Epic, I've not seen it go all the way up to Gbit download either, although I don't have nearly as many titles on there, I would need to benchmark the platform a little better, ideally would be to have the same title on both and see which downloads faster. Maybe something Techspot could test?

 

[Adhmuz]

Over 20 years Steam is the only store that got better and provided more services (for free).

All other stores just stood still.

Same reason I prefer to use Steam, and really what it all boils down to, personal preference. Not everyone needs all the features Steam has to offer, which I understand, that's their choice, and if it gives them the warm and fuzzies knowing the dev gets an additional 15% than all the power to them.

 

[scavengerspc]

Is this a consistent issue you are having with Steam's download speeds?

I've noticed download speeds do vary title to title and if a large title has recently released speeds can be a little slower. But you know, not getting my full Gbit download speed and only get 75% of it isn't a huge deal, however it does hit my cap often enough.

What's happening to me is that I never seem to get faster than 40 MB/s at Steam (though it will occasionally go to 60 +\-) but I get full Gigabit speeds at Epic and Game Pass. Weird.