Steam Hitman 1 and 2 are separate versions with different features, and I thought the Epic Hitman Season 1 was a port of the Steam Hitman 1 (or is it/will it be running on the Hitman 3 engine?!). Stadia might be the only place where all the Hitmans run on the same engine - I hadn’t thought of it but sounds like Hitman 1 and 2 will automatically be in the Hitman 3 engine as soon as it’s released there. I can see an exec thinking “All the PC Hitmans are just 1 engine” and all the programmers and QA staff seeing 4-6 different ports to maintain. It is most definitely self-inflicted though - while I was happy that IO made it possible import Hitman 1 content into Hitman 2 I remember trying to figure out which versions of had which content and what would get imported. They do love their multi-tier, multi-named, weirdly-overlapping editions and DLC with not quite obvious upgrade paths…
Maybe the issue will be addressed?
They should just give away Hitman 2 on EGS , its a 2 year old game , can’t imagine its pulling in many sales anymore.
When your customers need a spreadsheet to get your game trilogy to work as you intended you know you done goofed.
Yeah, the trilogy is cursed that way. The first game had much confusion about how to buy the episodes each, how they joined later in a full game, the goty versions, the always online requirement, etc. The second game had some aspects like the individual episodes removed but it had more dlc and editions that made things confusing, together the whole add Hitman 1 into 2, and how the progression worked.
The third game now adds the wrench of Hitman 2 not being in EGS.
I can only imagine there is some licensing issue with the Hitman 2 distributor and they cannot add it to EGS or its content to H3 directly. We will see.
I would have thought the technical problem was no way for Epic to check that you have a game purchased in Steam. Or is that easy?
It’s not them who have to check. It’s IO Interactive with their IOI account system.
Yeah, as mentioned above, the main sticking point might be that WB Games published Hitman 2, but not Hitman 3, isn’t that right?
I think Hitman III being exclusive to the Epic store here is the main Gordian knot locked inside an adamantine vault on a floating impenetrable fortress guarded by a immortal dragon of destiny.
If it was released on Steam we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Yep, I think that’s what it makes more sense.
The issue here is that IOI said it was going to be no problem before they knew whether or not it was gonna be a problem.
If someone bought Hitman 1 on PS4 they wouldn’t expect to be able to import it into the Steam or Xbox version of Hitman 2.
Why on earth would PC players expect to be able to import Steam purchases of Hitman 1 and/or Hitman 2 into Hitman 3 on Epic? It’s a totally different ecosystem.
It should be easy, unless the feature for listing owned games has been removed from Steam’s Oauth API entirely. Gog used to do occasional “if you own game X on Steam, you get it for free on Gog” weekends. (Gog Connect?)
To make that analogue work, you’d also need the game to become a timed Xbox exclusive.
I would expect it because IOI promised it.
Why did they promise it? Because they’d presumably like to sell some copies of the game on the PC, rather than have everyone wait for a year + a big discount. The linkage between the games is a core feature of the trilogy. The core market for this game has already invested a lot of money in the series. By not allowing the level imports, you’re asking them to either rebuy the content, or feel like second class citizens compared to the consoles.
(I do find it amusing that after all the discussions in the EGS thread around how PC is the platform and it shouldn’t matter what store/launcher you use, it’s now flipped to “the store is the platform, why would you expect the PC to be”.)
Because IOI said that’s what they could do before this latest announcement. It still literally says this on the official website.
HITMAN 3 is the best place to play every game in the World of Assassination trilogy. All locations from HITMAN 1 and HITMAN 2 can be imported and played within HITMAN 3 at no additional cost for existing owners – plus progression from HITMAN 2 is directly carried over into HITMAN 3 at launch.
Also, all the progression and unlocks are tied to an account on IO’s servers that you have to log into separately from in-game and all the information for progression unlocking is done through there. The unlocks and achievements are tied to doing things on specific maps so it’s a stretch to think there’s no way they couldn’t get that information from that connection, if they for some reason don’t have it already.
I realised yesterday that it would normally be unreasonable to expect any content to carry over in a sequel normally. But since they promise it, I feel it’s become an important part of the value of the game and lets them get away with quite a bit less main game content - I would otherwise consider 6 levels pretty stingy.
I don’t think that is viable, since it would allow the use of one Steam copy of Hitman 2 to be used for unlocking all the Hitman 3 content on Epic for multiple Epic users. (A single Steam copy could be used to create multiple distinct Steam+IOI accounts via family sharing.)
Hmmmm there are definitely some tricky situations for IOI to work out like in that case which IOI account gets to the unlock, but it’s definitely a solved problem (EDIT ok thinking through below maybe it’s downgraded to probably solvable). I remember some horrific/hilarious rigamarole involving linking Epic and Steam accounts to a klei account to get a Steam key from an alpha key on Epic. My ioi account definitely links to my steam account (I had to login and authorise using the steam connection and it prompted me to create a password so…apparently the ingame account neither links steam nor ) and says I have Hitman 2 as a registered product - no idea how family sharing Steam accounts look on their end though so that’s a good point.
You might be right about family sharing being an issue though - they could restrict only one Epic account gets Hitman 3 but then you have the issue of which IOI account gets it (the first to claim it? Is there an owner of the Steam game for families?) and people complaining “I can play it on Steam why can’t I get it on Epic” vs giving it to all the accounts and people doing fake family shenanigans to unlock it in multiple Hitman 3 copies. Interesting to see if they resolve it though…
Cool, IO’s saying PC players who already own the games won’t have to repurchase them on EGS. I might get this now.
Nice.
Crisis averted.