Hitman – Game of the Year Edition has been removed from GOG, after outcry over the DRM-free platform selling the game with online DRM.
Eurogamer reported the week of the game’s launch on GOG saw outrage from fans. While story and bonus missions could be played offline, the store page warned users that Escalation missions, Elusive Targets, and user-created Contracts would require an online connection. This is despite GOG being a proudly non-DRM storefront for PC games.
In addition, it was later learned that players needed to be online to unlock new equipment and starting locations; and to even get mission scores or level up their location mastery. This unsurprisingly led to many negative reviews- reaching as low as 1.5 out of 5 earlier this week.
At the time GOG Team member “chandra” told users on the GOG forums they were looking into the matter, and would be updating them in the coming weeks. Chandra also confirmed the reviews would not be removed, as they did not violate their review guidelines.
Chandra posted again on Friday, confirming that they removed the game from GOG’s store while discussing the matter with IO Interactive. As such, the GOG team apologized for the game’s launch.
“Dear Community,
Thank you for your patience and for giving us the time to investigate the release of HITMAN GOTY on GOG. As promised, we’re getting back to you with updates.
We’re still in dialogue with IO Interactive about this release. Today we have removed HITMAN GOTY from GOG’s catalog – we shouldn’t have released it in its current form, as you’ve pointed out.
We’d like to apologise for the confusion and anger generated by this situation. We’ve let you down and we’d like to thank you for bringing this topic to us – while it was honest to the bone, it shows how passionate you are towards GOG.
We appreciate your feedback and will continue our efforts to improve our communication with you.”
Hitman (2016) is available on Windows PC, Linux, Mac (all via the Epic Games Store, and Steam), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia.
