Hitman 3 Is Having A Rough Launch

Hitman 3 just launched on Jan. 20, 2021, but it hasn't quite been a flawlessly executed operation that Agent 47 would be proud of. Developer and publisher IO Interactive's plans for the World of Assassination Trilogy were always ambitious. In theory, players who purchased multiple Hitman games should have been able to seamlessly transfer their progress from one game to another. But in practice, things haven't been that smooth. And that's just the beginning of Hitman 3's issues.

For starters, IO built a dedicated website that players could log into and transfer their Hitman 1 and 2 progress into Hitman 3. This would have carried over the players' existing profile, XP, suits, items and unlocks. But the website has been overwhelmed by thousands of carryover requests and hasn't reliably worked. In response, IO scrambled to fix the problem. On Jan. 21, IO told Eurogamer that the servers were now "running smoothly."

Another big planned feature for the Hitman trilogy involved allowing Hitman 3 players who already purchased Hitman 1 and 2 to play levels from those games in Hitman 3. To do this, players simply needed to download the right Access Pass. There are five different Access Passes that correspond to different versions of Hitman and Hitman 2, and IO confirmed that players who already bought the games would be able to download their Access Passes for free. But not everyone has been able to locate and download their correct Access Pass. IO announced via tweet that it hopes to have a solution in the "coming weeks."

PC users have also run into this issue on the Epic Game store. On Jan. 17, Epic stated it was working with IO on a resolution. But as of Jan. 22, there are still no free versions of the Hitman 2 Access Passes available on the Epic Games Store. 

And there are even more issues. Players who purchased the PS4 version of Hitman 3 were entitled to a free upgrade to the PS5 version, but some have reported that the upgrade doesn't work. IO and Sony are aware of the problem, and were still working on a fix at the time of this writing. Finally, Hitman 3 still requires the player to be constantly online to save their progress, but there are still hiccups with connecting to the Hitman server. Usually the game quickly reconnects to the server without issue, but this problem has reportedly plagued the series since 2016. 

As Cyberpunk 2077 just reminded everyone, many games experience severe issues at launch. Usually the developer can eventually fix them. But for now, all these issues have the same effect: some players have to choose between waiting to play the conclusion to the trilogy until IO fixes the technical issues, or starting Hitman 3 without their saved gear or progress.