With Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 being removed from sale, how long will the servers for those games stay up? Is there an end-of-life plan/patch? What about missing content?

I posted this on the Hitman subreddit already, but figured I should post it here as well for visibility.

The past 3 Hitman games all require an always-online connection to the server in order to access the full content of the games (including progression/challenges).

Today, IO has announced that, along with the rebrand of Hitman 3 to World of Assassination and the reworking of its content bundles, they will also be taking down Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 from sale on all platforms.

Although I think they should have kept those games available for historical purposes (I myself played through the first two games to appreciate all the differences before moving to the third one), I understand why they’re taking them down, as the purchasing experience for the trilogy has basically been a nightmare up to this point, and almost all of the content is playable within Hitman 3.

What I’m wondering now though is how long the servers for those two games will stay up for people who already own the games. Obviously they will likely see very few new players following this change, so it’s only a matter of time before the cost of running the servers outweighs the number of players on them, so they will inevitably shut down at some point.

What I would like to know is, when will the servers shut down, and, when they do, will there be a patch to those games to enable full offline functionality? I think that now is an important time to discuss this, especially since IO has forgone discussion of their always-online system up to this point.

Additionally, there is still some content in those first two games that still has not been officially brought into Hitman 3. This includes a number of escalations and challenges, as well as the Sarajevo Six bonus contracts from Hitman 2016. The latter will probably never be brought into Hitman 3 (at least on Xbox and PC) due to an exclusivity deal with Sony IIRC, but I see no reason for them to add the former since they will no longer be accessible for new Hitman players. I’m interested to see what everyone else thinks, and hopefully we will receive more information about this from IO Interactive as well.

p.s.: I’m aware of the mod to play Sarajevo Six on PC, but I still think it would be nice to make it playable in an official capacity.

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I’d assume they would keep the servers up for at least half a year, but I could be wrong. I’d really love an offline patch as well, it would suck to have half of the game locked behind, inaccessible.

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I really only need access to Colorado in H1, to relive the experience of entering the basement for story purposes. The changes made from H2 onward to negate that was not a welcome change, to my view. Everything else from the past games can be redone through H3, so I have no further need for them. Won’t really matter if the servers go down.

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I assume due to contact conditions Sarajevo Six won’t be seen anywhere except HITMAN 2016 for PlayStation.
Developers talked about it couple of times in their livestreams and said that have no plans of changing the current situation whatsoever.
Same goes for Elusive Targets based on real people.
Fortunately we have only 2 such Elusives, one for first two games each. They won’t be present in HITMAN World of Assassination in any form. Well, in any official form at least, because any types of mods are not official.

As for the servers, I don’t think tthey will be shut down in the nearest future.
I suppose IOI will notify us when they decide to kill off anything and will do this well-beforehand.
So don’t worry, play HITMAN
:slight_smile:

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I hope they won’t shut servers down yet, or at least bring a definitive and working OFFLINE patch (for scoring, unlocks, and stuff) in a near future.

I’m still playing all versions of the game, to each with their own gameplay features, weapons and differences regarding a lot of things.

On top on that i’m still working on my youtube videos so if they’re shutting down the servers too soon it would seriously compromise my plans regarding my upcoming HITMAN videos that are going through all the three games…

Looking forward to what’s going to happen in the next months.

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What, you can’t do that anymore? Never knew!
What a silly thing to cut out.

Given that after January 26 IO won’t be making a penny off of sales of 2016 and 2 anymore and fewer and fewer people will play those games I think the shutdown could happen sooner rather than later. I could be wrong though, I fully expected IO to make Ambrose Island and Freelancer paid, yet they made them both free additions.

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You can, but the music and dialogue that occur in H1 once you open the door was removed for H2-3 as part of making it so that you don’t have to trigger that sequence every time; you can just kill the targets and leave. The changes affect the connection that sequence has with the story of the game, as the sound and dialogue change helps to focus the moment on the story. Considering they did the same thing with accessing the ICA database in Chongqing, but not with getting the clues in Whittleton Creek, I wish they’d put it back how it was. So when I’m playing the game and following the story line, I use my save file from H1 for that sequence.

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i mean its kinda very unfair to make people pay 100usd for fresh trilogy, just to shut down servers for 1 an 2 in like half a year… lots of peeps spend like 100h per map, if there is 6 maps per game thats 600h! if u play 1h per day that 600 days, or half a year. and thats if u play hitmal ONLY

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I think the implementation of Hitman 2016 content in Hitman 3’s engine is not at an acceptable level to shut down the old game. You have map changes with the addition of tall grass, yes it’s a cool new mechanic but the maps were not designed for it, and it just makes already designed stealth sections easier. The changes to head-turning and line of sight mechanics for NPC’s break the maps too, as there are many places where you have to wait for an NPC to look away at the right time, or where a climbing path that you would previously be invisible on now get you spotted every time. Again the maps are NOT designed for these new NPC vision mechanics. There are so many bugs with the ported maps too, many opportunities, doors and items are straight up broken. Walls become see through because of the bad porting too.

ICA facility is in my opinion completely ruined, neither the “free form training” or the “final test” are actually free-form anymore, the final test forces you through the ejector seat opportunity now with constant on-screen prompts of what to do. The ICA facility was a great tutorial and now it’s messed up, Hitman 2 has it’s own tutorial in Hawke’s Bay and Hitman 3 has the tutorial escalation in Dubai so it makes little sense to re-purpose the Hitman 1 tutorial in this way.

And of course so many missing escalations and bonus missions. Not to mention that the progression of unlocks is changed and you get a lot of powerful tools easily in Hitman 3 that were difficult to unlock in 2016 version, again drastically changing the gameplay.

There is a LOT of work to be done before it’s in any kind of shape to be considered complete in the Hitman 3 engine. And why even bother when it already is completed in 2016 engine with zero extra work to do. To get raytracing? Pfft.
At the current pace of fixes for 2016 content, perhaps the work will be done in about 2040.

The all-in-one “World of Assassination” concept is really cool in theory, but in practice it has been a big fail.

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I think it went rather well.

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This one aged like milk :sob:

Yeah, see the date of the post.
That’s good that they found a way to bring it back to HITMAN 3.
Maybe they’ll release all the Elusive Targets as well at the very end of game support for people to enjoy at their leisure

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But I had to pay 5 sweet pounds bruh I thought that was deluxe content :sob:

But Sarajevo Six has been out for almost exactly seven years now. Two minutes of research would’ve been enough to know what exactly you are paying for.

Unless you meant you expected it to be included in the deluxe version, which they never said it would.

To be honest, I was like 6 when the Sarajevo Six came out so I didn’t know what it was until the August Roadmap dropped

I know paying a little more isn’t ideal but I’m just glad that this content has been able to be incorporated and be somewhat preserved.

Cause for 7 years we just assumed it was locked away to the PS4 and specifically the 2016 game only.

Now people can play it with all the Hitman 2 and 3 goodies without having to mod the PC version.

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