Hitman: Game of the Year Edition has recently been released on GOG and is being slated by players there. The debate revolves around DRM and online compulsion.
Hitman (the 2016 game) has garnered a lot of praise and great reviews internationally. The assassin sandbox also remains very popular among gamers. So how can it be that it is receiving a veritable shitstorm on GOG for its release?
Is this DRM or not?
This happened: Hitman has been released as a GOTY edition on the gaming platform GOG. It currently has a miserable average rating of 1.4 / 5 stars. And that’s despite the fact that many players were really looking forward to Agent 47! The reason is a controversial online storage system.
This is the gamers’ problem:GOG differs from Steam and Epic mainly in that it offers games without DRM (Digital Rights Management, a way of preserving copy protection). DRM has earned a pretty bad reputation, partly because some are suspected of leading to performance problems and crashes. Take Denuvo technology, for example.
In the current case of Hitman, however, many GOG users now feel deceived. The game comes without a special copy protection programme – but many functions are tied to an online connection. In other words, if you want to play offline, you can’t access certain missions, such as those built by other users.
At the moment, there is even more criticism for the fact that many things can only be unlocked in online mode, for example new items, disguises, starting points and so on. This is not entirely unimportant for Hitman, because at the moment you have access to the story in offline mode, but you can only play the missions with the starting equipment. This eliminates the need for a second playthrough to test the newly acquired weapon, which is an essential part of the Hitman games.
This is how GOG reacts
Meanwhile, there is a warning on Hitman GOTY’s shop page that states that certain mission types are not accessible in offline mode. However, it doesn’t explicitly mention that unlocks will also be blocked from you unless you connect to developer IO Interactive’s servers.
In the official forum you can also read the following statement from GOG:
Dear GOG Community! Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We are looking into it and will give you an update in the coming weeks. If you have purchased Hitman and are not happy with the released version, then you can exercise your right to return the game. While we are open to constructive discussion and feedback, we will not tolerate review bombing and will remove posts that do not meet our review guidelines.
The return policy on GOG is valid for 30 days after purchase. There are currently hundreds of negative user reviews under Hitman, a team member has made it explicitly clear that criticism warning of the current problems is not automatically classed as review bombing. It is still unclear whether there will soon be a fully-fledged offline version of the assassin game on GOG.
