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Fuckin whatever. Someone else just needs to bankroll season two of the undisputed 2016 GB GOTY.

10 years later to get a worthy successor to Blood Money and then this shit.

Critically speaking Hitman's episodic model was ingenious because it played to the game's greatest strengths, allowing players to fully explore each map and take advantage of all the opportunities it had to offer. It allowed dedicated players to attain mastery over each episode and provided loads of updates and events to encourage doing so. Whether it made good business sense for Square is irrelevant to me as a player.

Square didn't release sales figures for this Hitman game so without those no one really knows how well it did or didn't do. I do know that Square as a publisher has a history of setting huge and unrealistic sales targets for many of their games. Remember that Square is the publisher who defined Tomb Raider (2013) as a failure even after it sold 3.4 million copies.On top of this Square just posted huge profits so it doesn't exactly paint a picture of a publisher who's in dire straits.

I think it's really unfortunate that IO now has an uncertain future whilst this game that clearly is very well liked hangs in the balance.

If this is true, it seems likely the Hitman IP will stay with IO... assuming they can find a buyer.

Rumor: Io Interactive will retain Hitman rights

Man, this needs to be true

woooo. Lets hope.

EDIT: Seems like the German site that is the origin of the rumor is pretty big and reputable. So that helps lend it some credibility.

I really hope that they find a buyer that recognizes the success that can be had iterating on the current HITMAN formula.

I guess games-as-service is more expensive than I thought

Please be true, only last year I was remarking about as a long time Hitman fan what a joy it was to see people who didn't quite get Hitman finally get Hitman with this iteration. Seeing this news is probably the worst video game news I've heard in a long time.

Please be true. Please be true.

@thom_hill: I hope someone picks them up. HITMAN is my favorite game in a long time. That being said, I think Ubisoft would waste the opportunity. I want HITMAN to continue to stand out. In the last 10 years or so most Ubisoft games have felt the same. I think Bethesda might fit though. They did an amazing job with DOOM and I think the strangeness or DOOM and the silly, self-awareness of HITMAN 2016 line up well. Besthesda may be down to publish more HITMAN if they end up buying IO.

Kneejerk reaction. What the fuck dude. Hitman and game as service was like serendipity. And it was just starting to feel like SE is kind of on a roll in multiple fronts, and now this happen.

Although if I/O is worth money thanks to the reception of Hitman, but didn't exactly bring it in terms of sales, and they don't really want to bankroll an on going service, it might make good business sense to sell it off for cash right now.

@frytup: That kinda fits with the tweet they made in response to one of the inquires:

They couldn't really go 'back to making games' unless they had the right to be making said games. Unless of course they for some reason had moved on to another project, which seems highly unlikely. In any case, it sounds like they will have more to say on Monday.

Sucks after the last Hitman turned out so good, but I can imagine the episodic nature of it turned away a lot of buyers. Outside of Giant Bomb the most common thing you'd hear about Himan was "how good it was for a game no one's talking about."

Yeah, the episodic nature (with the starter pack being free) was the best and worst thing about it. I wound up buying the series when it was on sale and, unless many people jump like I did, that's already money out of pocket. And it's not like that can be subsidised with monetised content.

The episodic nature of HITMAN was fine since I always hoped to buy the complete season once it was released. However, while it does not help that I think much of the pricing structure around the episodes is bad, the issue that's kept me from buying it is that the episodic structure went hand-in-hand with the game being always-online. I just don't buy anything that's always-online for a single-player experience.

EA/Ghost Games also had trouble moving units of Need For Speed 2015 and I think that's at least partially due to it being always-online; so much so that Ghost Games released a statement that includes an assertion of how they are backing away from the always-online requirement in the next NFS.

All that said, I hope IO lands on their feet and the next season of Hitman keeps humming along.

Please, release any assets of Kane and Lynch 3 IO if you don't find a buyer.

Now my non selfish pitch. I love pretty much every IO Interactive game out there. They are one of my favorite developers.

Please, SOMEONE buy them.

@artisanbreads: Hmm still no info on IP rights or what they intend to do to stay afloat. They're obviously downsizing which is a real bummer I hope everyone manages to pull through.

@ivdamke: I feel like it's a good sign for them going on somewhat intact but no idea what it means for Hitman. Hoping that info about them continuing on it is accurate.