Samir is leaving IOI. Thanks for everything, @Combatglue and good luck 
https://x.com/combatglue/status/2100724210435833908?s=46&t=2orsYVHpvZ_ahM2kYx03YA
(Not sure if this has been posted anywhere else)
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@thrison is going to have to dig out the thesaurus when posting his tribute, with how many variations of “awesome” he’ll need to reach for to properly express his massively favourable impressions of CG’s time in the hotseat.
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At a human level, I’m glad that he’s putting himself first and has taken the time away from work responsibilities to look after himself. Mental health is such an important thing to look after and should always be prioritised. I truly do wish him well on finding what is next for him and that whatever it is turns out to be a perfect match. I don’t wish anything negative on him.
That said, on a different level - thank fucking god he’s left the role. From what we saw, he wasn’t the right fit for the job and it was a bit of a dark period as far as communication went. I am thankful we don’t have the threat of him returning hanging over us anymore.
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Agreed, some people think that because we are critical of someone’s performance at their job it means that we hate that person at a personal level, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I don’t have any hate or resentment towards Samir, I don’t even know him personally, he might be a really nice guy; but the truth is he left a lot to be desired as a community manager. With that being said, I wish him the best on his future endeavors.
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I legit thought he left a year ago
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As per usual, the moment I go on break, the interesting stuff happens:
So, as a person who has probably had the most…er…interaction…with CombatGlue, outside of BlossomFox, I got the sense he was only there for the job itself. And to some extent, that’s fine, but it also greatly affected our perceptions of his work at the company.
As others have mentioned, the period of Samir’s PR time was not exactly…rosy. We had the 4 and a half months of the sapienza edition being out, while the PR team (not just Samir) claiming that they “were listening!” on-stream, they even said that repeatedly. But evidently, they were not. That whole fisaco took as long as it did because IOI was not told properly on how much everybody hated it. That is the only thing that makes sense.
I think even executives have the sanity to see that if something has gone down really really badly, then maybe they should reverse course. They rely on the PR teams to get a feel for the community’s engagement with the news. And that negative news was not getting to the heads.
They did not communicate very often, often leaving the forum and reddit for months at a time, and the few times they did, it was either to apologise or when patches launched to write down concerns…which they self-admitted were often forgotten about.
Never mind the odd problem of not openly speaking in anywhere but DM’s. A good chunk opf info from IO in that time was obtained via BlossomFox’s DM-ing them, and even that stopped.
The sole benefit this had was that Arti came along to be the best PR person we’ve ever had, because I think even corporate realised that “hey maybe we should communicate with our players frequently instead of leaving them hanging for months at a time!”
What a concept.
I wish him all the best in his future endeavors, but I will not miss this era of IOI he contributed to.
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Reading over some of the stuff here, and I agree with the general sentiment that he left something to be desired as a community manager. No bitterness attached. I hesitate to “like” any post saying “thank god he’s gone,” because that seems a little harsh, but admittedly, Arti is killing it rn. 
I am a little biased because he acknowledged some Hitman fans, like myself, and gave them the deluxe WOA pack…heh. He also helped get the Girl Power contracts together. That was towards the beginning though, before the radio silence, which was not good. He was a nice dude. He just didn’t seem to mesh well with IOI/Hitman, and hopefully he can find a job that better suits him and his mental health improves.
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@Combatglue tenure also saw the franchise communicating with, and bringing in, the international Hitman communities.
Like the SOHM featured contracts.
Amongst everything else, I think it should be saluted.
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I think the broad summation of the difference between Samir and Arti is that both came in as non-fans, but Arti you can tell became a fan via his employment and Samir didn’t. Which I think does affect how you do your job. The Turtleneck with gloves is the best example: we’ve asked Travis, Clemens, Samir and Arti all to add it and all we had to do with Arti is @ him regarding it and it got added the next month cause he said “that looks cool”
I can’t blame Samir for how he handled the job, because it was at the end of the day a job which required interacting with the fanbase of a game you weren’t really a huge fan of who knew way more than you did and expected you to follow it and when you didn’t engage got annoyed. That’s my most charitable read on the guy, even Clemens and Travis you can tell their love for the series as fans became obligation by the final years as the job got more thankless
I don’t have much nice to say about how he did his job, but I also acknowledge that at the end of the day it is a job and I have no right to comment on anyone’s performance unless I literally employ them. So I wish him well and that’s all I’ll say about him, because now that’s all that can be said. His time where it’d be appropriate to comment on him is now over, so any critique is obsolete
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Most of us are lucky enough to NOT have our job performance dissected online. Would any of us stand up to scutaneering?
I wish him the best.
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I’m just glad we finally know whether he’s coming back or not.
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I wish Samir well and I think he may very well have been one of the ones to finally get the Seasonal Safehouse decorations in Freelancer given he liked every post I put on here about them and even took it to the Devs, so I thank him for that 
Was he the right man for the community manager position, absolutely not, but I wish him well and thank him for the small contributions he made initially when he came in post
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