Last week, IO Interactive said that players would need Hitman 2 in the Epic Games Store if they wanted to import the levels into Hitman 3. That was kind of bullshit – for owners of the game on Steam, it meant you would either have to buy those levels, or you would have to buy it again. Fortunately, IO is looking for a solution and we guarantee that players will not have to buy the game again.
“We will continue to work with our partners to allow PC players owning Hitman 1 or Hitman 2 to import locations from those games onto no extra costs, ” they said on Sunday.
“We guarantee that players will NOT buy these games again. “
(Bold and capital letters emphasis from IO.)
The problem is, both Hitman 1 and 2 were originally released on Steam, while Hitman 3 is released as an Epic exclusive. In August, IO advertised that “locations 1 and 2 can be imported at no extra cost to existing owners.” But they revealed on Friday that this didn’t count for Steam owners and they had to buy the Hitman 2 Access Pass on Epic to get those locations.
However, IO is working with Epic to sort things out, saying the change will be rolled out “in the coming weeks” – which is tricky given Hitman 3’s launch in just two days, on Wednesday, January 20.
“We never want players to feel compelled to buy back content from the Epic Game Store that they have purchased from another PC store so that they can access features in a new game,” Epic said Sunday.
The Hitman 1 GOTY Access Pass is still free for PC players who pre-order Hitman 3 or purchase it within 10 days of launch. So you have at least some Hitman 1 levels to play until the Hitman 2 drama is done.