Gamescom.
Five days, including week-end, of public facing work oversea, long hours, preparations, two more of travel, debrief, and everything else around it.
Next week will see the previews published, and the gameplay reveal.
Rest is fair, if not mandatory.
Makes sense, makes sense. Yeah I think he should have settled his Forum PR work prior to Gamescom.
Only joking, of course. It seems that whatever he would do in regards to this forum is at or near the bottom of his priorities. But I guess if that’s how it works out, then that’s how it works out.
Or at the very least said something instead of just hoping it’d get figured out.
Guys this discussion drifts away from being civilized.
I have full sympathy and share some of the criticism towards the course of IO and, while I cared, was also disappointed with the amount, quality and regularity of the communication with us.
But I must remind you to keep the criticism on an impersonal level. We do not know the time table of CombatGlue, what he does and what keeps him busy. Certainly he is doing his working hours as otherwise he would not keep the job. It should be uncontroversial that a working person has a right for doing holidays too.
We also don’t know what the other community people at IO do that introduced themselves here and sadly did not stick around.
Yes, it would be nice to know these things, but in the end that is nothing we have a right on. If IO as a company does not mind this state of things, then I am sure we can address this in a better way.
If we get known to be a toxic fan forum we will less likely see posts from IO here. Surely nobody wants that.
Same. I just don’t care anymore. Over 20 years of love, admiration and enthusiasm for IO Interactive and Hitman just disappeared over the last few years.
If it wasn’t for the great community here, I’d moved on a long time ago.
I come from a much older school of thought I suppose. I have never expected any sort of communication from a game company regarding the games that they’ve already released. While I realize that IOI established the game as a live service game, and i realize that they were the ones that put their community managers “out there” and encouraged them to have dialog with the community, I still don’t actually expect them to do so, nor fault them for not doing it. The same would apply to any game company.
To me, a game is a thing you buy and play and there shouldn’t be any expectation that the company that created it would ever reach out to the players. If they do, great, but it shouldn’t be expected.
You touched on it yourself with them making Hitman a live service game. I haven’t followed the games that closely for a lack of interest, but I’m almost certain I’ve seen them do server maintenance without proper heads up and releasing patches that breaks stuff and having no communication about fixing it.
I think it’s these sort of things that upset people. It should be expected given the experience IOI is selling.
I have to echo Urben’s sentiment here though. Calling out individual employees out of frustration is not okay. Direct it at the company, not some guy who works there.
Generally, I 100% agree with this. But in this very specific situation, I disagree.
When some individual(s) have previously acknowledged that they weren’t doing enough, promising to do better by specifically saying what they will be doing different going forward and then don’t do any of it - they’ve positioned themselves where they can be directly attributed to it when the cycle repeats again in future.
Its not unfairly targeting them just because of what their role at IO is, its holding them accountable for failing to deliver on previously-made and publicly-made promises.
This is a live service game that keeps getting patches that introduce various bugs, so no, your stance on this is just wrong. Hitman Contracts or Blood Money weren’t live service games, so obviously expectations weren’t the same for them.
Ioi shouldn’t have tacked on live service elements on a single player game, since they obviously weren’t ready/willing to properly communicate with the players.
CombatGlue last posted on here on August 6th, 2025, and the last few posts before that were July 23rd, 22nd, 21st and then July 5th. I’m not saying being toxic is any better (Please don’t harass people online), but if they pledged to talk to fans more and spend almost an entire month not doing so (especially in the wake of this buggy patch), then you must forgive people on here a bit for being a bit irate about their promise to communicate more not being fulfilled on their end.
I’d argue not much will change in the long-term, toxicity toward PR or not. We’ll continue to get the short end of the stick anyway.
To fans and players alike, it feels like a Mortons Fork:
Be Toxic: We’ll stop communicating with HMF and/or the userbase.
Be respectful: We’ll communicate when we want to.
It’s…not much of a difference tbh, and it leads to the same outcome of silence for long periods of time.
It’s interesting. I can honestly say that I mostly feel a great sense of gratitude when I think of IO. I remember that I couldn’t believe it when H2: Silent Assassin was announced (I loved C47 as a kid already). I thought it would just be this one game.
To think that my favorite franchise have now survived for over two decades… And it even thrived with WOA, where they took everything way beyond my expectations - it’s just amazing. I remember how mindblown I was the first time I played Paris. The scope of the gameplay was honestly beyond my dreams.
IO could have a gone under so many times during the years (in 2017-18 or after Absolution). So many of my other beloved franchises, even more successful ones, are long gone. But Hitman survived.
I don’t like broken promises either and honestly I do sometimes share in a certain skepticism towards the new community management.
But to me, WOA as a base game has been such an over-the-top addition to the series. The sheer amount of content, money for value as a package. I could never really complain. That would just feel entitled to me.
Everything on top of the hundreds of hours of gameplay WOA has offered, wether that be hollow live service stuff or spotty communication with the fanbase, just seems like a bonus to me. Especially compared to years of radio silence between games during the first 15 years of Hitman.
To add onto this, the landscape of the entire internet changed between then and now. Even between Absolution and 2016. We have very different standards now, and for good reason. No longer are we in the age where a game developer can release a game and only find very dedicated fans angry about it on a niche forum. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, they all changed the game. Dedicated Blogs and gaming magazines had a niche that eventually got outpaced over time.
People can, and should, make their concerns heard if a game, patch, or update goes awry, instead of accepting it and moving on.
Asking him to be more active is absolutely valid. That is less aiming to him as a person and more his role as a community manager. I was talking about more personal statements on him in the past.
Let me repeat that apparently he is filling his time with productivity as he keeps his job. No idea with what, but there’s that. So I still see IO as a company is the one to address here.
Regarding the outcome of how we run this community, I am glad you agree that we should not be toxic either way. That way we certainly cannot be blamed for the situation. I also like to think that one should not be toxic even if they get nothing in return. Which is why we staff want to keep it that way regardless of how well IO is participating.
By the way, just being happy with the game and not bothering for this fan communication of a company is something I can get behind at. But that is our own individual decision how we value games. Others like the engagement and I think those should ideally not be left frustrated. I stopped caring for that much out of frustration too.
It is more pleasant here for me now that I only care for the game and us users. IO plays a smaller role here for me and I just hope they are aware of that.
Disagree, but that’s fine. I don’t think the game being “live service” obligates the game company to send me texts or emails or join a forum. All of the communication can be done within the game itself and I’d be fine with that.
I agree we should be grateful that a developer is part of the forum at all, no matter how frequently, and that they’re entitled to time off. Especially when their infrequent visits are met with such unfiltered critique. Access to a development company is a privilege, not a right, and many go silent for years between instalments in their various franchises.
This forum is likely IO’s most influential playerbase in terms of sales and continued playing, and perhaps recent years have seen them forget the importance of keeping HMF in the loop. But undue expectation has been placed on IO’s PR operative.
I understand that the live nature of Hitman does make communication ever more important than a standalone offline game. Sudden changes, an unusual amount of bugs, and maintenance without warning is frustrating, but it’s also the case with other companies. Ubisoft, EA and Squire Enix don’t join fan forums, nor allow you to PM one of their people out of the blue or request updates outside of the marketing cycle
They owe us everything, they owe us nothing
I actually don’t see that much problems with IOI communication.
The only communication issue I truly see is on bugs and maintenance.
Whose frustrations can, and should, be addressed in a dialogue with the community.
It historically was.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if it was not on CombatGlue. But on internal communication of those informations to him.
Especially now that IOI is international.
It would also link to like the whole “classic trilogy” kerfuffle, and affiliated others.
(in which case a review is in order.)
(might need better need to know on some key informations, or plain documents and meeting minutes there. The community manager should be able to browse this stuff.)
(If that is)
All the rest IOI, and Samir do.
In a managed way.
Mostly going for retention before release at key events.
The next celebrETs are teased.
The Franchise anniversary too.
Roadmap are seasonal, but have been so for years now.
Featured Contract batches are going to more communities than before. (an underrated improvement under Samir tbh)
Combat is actively checking with twitch chats to ensure the drops are working as intended.
First Light is taking place, and obviously in a prepared careful way. With bonus joy of plugging leaks.
Etc…
It might be less than some wish. But it’s done nonetheless.
After that there is the question of the actual content.
Like many, I have some issues with it. Some miss baffle me.
Technical and QA are cratering.
And it’s giving me despair.
But it’s not on communication.
Tell me a bit more info on this please because I don’t seem to be having this issue on Xbox X/S? 
Its a issue in the fork of the game that PS5 is on due to PSVR2, so no other platforms are currently experiencing it (at least until the PSVR2 mode comes to PC, then PC players are also doomed).
Apparently there was an issue in VR where some targets wouldn’t show up in instinct - I assume they fixed it, but broke it even more in flat mode at the same time. Now when you approach a target in any game mode, there is a chance that their highlight in instinct will just turn off like they can sense 47 and flipped a switch to protect themselves.
It is just one of the many bugs that are plaguing only the PS5 players at the moment.
This sounds like a renderer issue to me. Given that PC is DirectX based, I would be surprised if the bug could be “ported” over to PC since the Graphics APIs will never be unified.
Gameplay problems like the newspaper not being a knockout are more surprising since this sort of behaviour should be coming from a common codebase, but evidently is not.
It seems like the PS and PC codebases have very little shared code - must be a maintenance nightmare.