Heya users!
We recently asked you to temporarily not post leaks, something that never happened before on Hitmanforum.
The reason for this were Travis' words about leaks at the IOI live stream from May 5th.
We considered first to just ban them. (leaks, not IO lol) We wrote a policy draft and sent it to Travis and Clemens to make really sure that is what is needed to make IOI feel to be the part of the community they are.
Luckily for you that will not be the step to be done. 
As IOI announced it, they work on their official modding policy. In our private talk they underlined that it is their responsibility to do a public statement first to make the life of fan-run communities like us easier. That is why there won’t be general restrictions here until then, although the tone of their reply made us believe there won’t be any even after that. But take that with a grain of salt.
Still we do a change.
Regardless of IOI’s position, there were voices here which favor a ban on leaks. Either because it seems disrespectful to IOI’s work and release plans or because even with the use of spoiler tags it happens way too easily to unintentionally run into them, especially next Elusive Targets. With the first issue not being as bad as we thought, we now attempt to fix the second one.
The ICA-Leak-Data-Dump
With today we introduce a category where you can post leaks. And as you notice, you cannot just access it by default. For that you need to add yourself to the @Leak-Investigators group. Your membership will be hidden if you decide to join.
This has many advantages:
- It is easy for you to avoid leaks altogether, including inside the search function
- It is easy for you to discuss leaks without excessive use of spoiler tags or warnings
- The spread of leaks from here to the rest of the Internet is prevented
More guests are forced to register which raises our IO payday
From now on the following topics are only allowed to be posted there:
- Datamined content from Hitman 3 that is not accessible normally
- Leaks from any other source of upcoming Hitman 3 content
- Cut content that was never public in case it will be included in the future
- Modifications that make anything of the above accessible as long they don’t bypass paywalls
Of course, the usual expectations regarding civilized behavior apply there as well. Also be aware that illegal content, like piracy, is still forbidden everywhere on HMF.
We expect everyone to handle leaks like that, even - or let’s say especially in cases where leaks would be on-topic in threads that are not in the leaks category. You may only mention that a leak exists outside the leaks category, so interested users can look them up.
Please flag posts that refuse to follow this policy or, if you are a Regular, move threads about leaks into the category. Inform the author and active posters via a private message in case they are not members of the leaks group.
(Obviously this policy applies only to the current, World of Assassination, games - if there’s something in Blood Money or Codename 47 we haven’t seen before then we can safely say its not going to spoil any upcoming releases…)
We try to move existing content into there but that will take some time and we’d appreciate a bit help at pointing us to relevant posts/topics.
That is all there is to say. Please use this thread to ask questions regarding the category or the group or discuss this decision in general.