I don’t want a quick fix, that isn’t what I want. I personally want them to make a statement, because so far all we’ve gotten is that they’re are very aware of the controversy in the IOI Insider, and that they’d give a proper response “as and when it comes”, which I was fine with a week ago as I fully admit PR takes a while to formulate a response. A week is about where I start to get impatient.
I don’t think they meant that they are in the process of formulating a statement right now and that it’s coming anytime soon. My reading is that they will make a statement when it becomes necessary (from their perspective), which I guess will be at the earliest when no more content is being released or later down the road when there might be a reason to shut down the servers.
They get asked for offline mode since there is online mode (aka since always). Them recognizing it is still relevant does not mean they have an answer a week later, especially in case they work on it for years.
Yeah, I take this as “we know the requests for a truly Offline mode are numerous, but we’ll give a proper update on this later down the line if and when we have a final discussion about the game’s servers and online functionalities.”
Despite the fact that this is the biggest stumble that Hitman has done regarding using its online mode, where the “Offline Version” is still the same game as ever, I don’t think any fixes are going to be made to it until the actual “Online Version” of the game on other storefronts are ready to be taken Offline too.
I think it’ll either stay as it is, or taken off of GOG. I don’t think we’ll be seeing proper Offline editions of Hitman 1 or 2 at this point, I’m just expecting the work to be put into Hitman 3 at some point instead.
I fear you may be right.
Make a lite version of the server and update the game to run with that locally then. They should experience a backlash by consumers for doing this thing if they won’t fix it for their products (H1-H3). The game is not playable without the servers as it’s a core part of the game functioning to a level anyone would consider useful.
Amazing how a (at the time) small studio could act exactly like EA and the like and get away with it.
A community-driven project is already underway about that.
Maybe IO will opt to do the same thing instead of tweaking the 3 clients, which can take a long time. They can include a localhost HTTP server alongside the .exe which acts as a lite backend. I wonder what they will really do at the end.
When they thought about this system back in 2013/2015, they thought they would have the full support of Square Enix and only have one client for the whole trilogy. Hakan said last April that the withdraw from Square forced them to make separate games because of publishing issues. And they had to lower their ambitions about the online.
Since then, they are somewhat stuck with that and limited online resources. Now that they have more people, I guess it will get a little easier.
So your solution is to “fix” the situation for PC and shaft the console players? So you’re just thinking of yourself instead of “fixing” the game for everyone? Nice.
No but if it’s such a huge problem I want some kind of solution, and I’m pretty sure you could update a PS/Xbox game to find a server locally on the network that is run on a computer on your network.
Of course I don’t want that though, the ideal solution would be a full offline experience right in the game with no weird ways to make it work, my comment was pointed at you saying it wasn’t cost effective to change their solution.
HITMAN Game of The Year Edition is no longer on GOG.com.
This is a strong signal but a logical decision, this game had nothing to do there in its current form. This should start some serious discussions internally at IO.
Dear Community,
Thank you for your patience and for giving us the time to investigate the release of HITMAN GOTY on GOG. As promised, we’re getting back to you with updates.
We’re still in dialogue with IO Interactive about this release. Today we have removed HITMAN GOTY from GOG’s catalog – we shouldn’t have released it in its current form, as you’ve pointed out.
We’d like to apologise for the confusion and anger generated by this situation. We’ve let you down and we’d like to thank you for bringing this topic to us – while it was honest to the bone, it shows how passionate you are towards GOG.
We appreciate your feedback and will continue our efforts to improve our communication with you.
Several things here;
- While this is a good step in the right direction, this is all I can read from it at the moment. IOI Insider this month will likely have more answers, but I beg IOI to tell us before then.
- If GOG really cared about its users as it claims to, it would not have done what it did to begin with. This isn’t some coding oversight like when IOI placed the shoulder swap option in controls, this was a willing compromise of their rules, and the hope people would not think the “always online” was not DRM.
- “We’re still in dialogue” could mean multiple things. I would love to believe it’ll bring an actual offline mode revamp to 2016, 2 and 3, but I’m not holding my breath. If IOI loves doing anything, it’s stonewalling and/ or deflecting for months on end.
- It did not need to take a week to take the sodding game down.
Let’s hope things will improve for the offline experience from hereon out, eh?
You just don’t cancel a publishing contract in a day.
We will see if that leads in more motivation to develop an offline mode. But one has to be aware we talk about three games here. IO might rather make one for H3 to further boost the sales of that, especially when the Epic exclusive time is over.
We will see what happens. If something happens.
GOG don’t necessarily have to cancel the publishing contract, they can just delist the game, and tell IOI why they’ve done that. That doesn’t sound like a cancelling of a contract. GOG, as the service maintainer, has that right, one they did not want to exercise, not until 3 hours ago.
Politics like this don’t get solved in a day, that much I can agree with.
We once again play the waiting game. Time for more Mini Ninja’s and voice recordings.
That’s all I’m hoping for, even though they haven’t shown any signs in this direction since the beginning. Putting the game on GOG even suggests the opposite in people minds. It’s a very strange move in the first place and is in no way positive on regard that the management has on the online mode. But who is surprised after all these years ?
They are proud of this DRM since day 1 without having made any changes to make the game more offline since end 2016.
The longer they wait, the more complicated it will become. It’s already complex because there are 3 games to handle, but in the years to come they will also have to find the right people who can do the job.
Again, I use Might and Magic X released in 2014 as an example, even if it’s a smaller game. Ubisoft pulled it from Steam because players couldn’t access the game’s single-player content or DLC in offline after they decided to end online support for a bunch of older games.
The situation is not likely to improve because the developers (Limbic Entertainment) who worked on this game a decade ago, no longer work for Ubisoft since 2016.
Unlike Might and Magic X, Hitman WOA has a more aggressive online requirement, which makes the situation even more complex.
A good development, from our perspective as players and beneficiaries of a hypothetical fully-functioned Offline mode. Hopefully this gives IOI pause for thought.
(Though as I’ve said before, I think an Offline mode is much more important for HITMAN 3 than HITMAN - implementing this for H3 would mean the whole trilogy is properly preserved via Access Pass packs for H1/H2, and if push came to shove I could accept HITMAN and HITMAN 2 never getting such a mode as long as HITMAN 3 did.)
And that would push them to delist the two previous games after the end of online support. The current owners would be redirected to the H3’s free starter pack, not a bad way to handle the situation at first glance. Like Urben said, we will see what happens. I am very curious about what will happen.
This shows that IO is holding to the always online requirement with their teeth. I can’t imagine why they would care about this for a game that is 5 years old and already made obsolete with H2 / H3…
“Strangely, the first game of the new Hitman trilogy launched support for offline mode all the way back in 2016; the lack of this support in the GOG version strikes me as a particularly strange omission.”
This is technically untrue. The “offline” mode in the current version is the same as what was patched in back in 2016 right?