I/O Interactive has made a huge announcement regarding Hitman: World of Assassination.
They made this statement on Twitter earlier today:
“In light of the recent court ruling regarding Conor McGregor, IO Interactive has made the decision to cease its collaboration with the athlete, effective immediately.
We take this matter very seriously and cannot ignore its implications. Consequently, we will begin removing all content featuring Mr. McGregor from our storefronts starting today.”
We don’t think it’s appropriate for you to learn the real life events related to this decision on this website, but you can get the details here. But there may be some confusion on what I/O’s decision actually means, so we’ll shed some light on that here.
Hitman: World of Assassination is a big expansion to Hitman III, that literally brings the franchise full circle. Players who already owned Hitman III also got the entirety of Hitman and Hitman II.
Alongside that, players received a new set of missions in a new story campaign that made major revelations about the franchise as a whole from the start of the 2016 reboot.
One of the many things added to Hitman: World of Assassination was Elusive Targets. This was a very unique mission type, because players only had a limited opportunity to take out said elusive target. You could only play the mission for a specific number of days, and you only get one chance.
Conor McGregor was made a Celebrity Elusive Target called the Disruptor, and his campaign, where you were assigned to assassinate the Disruptor, was only playable from June 27 to July 29, 2024.
So at the time of this decision, it had already been a few months since that content was playable. What I/O was actually announcing is that they were removing all remaining remnants of this collaboration.
In particular, Agent 47 could earn a Disruptor MMA suit, comprising MMA gloves and trunks, that players could conceivably use in other parts of the game, or that they could view that they earned for completing the mission.
This is certainly not the first time where a video game severs their association or partnership with celebrities after making a deal to work with them. I/O Interactive can only have regrets for their choices, but hopefully, this will be a worthwhile lesson on how they plan to make such collaborations in the future.
I/O Interactive has other projects to look forward to, including their upcoming James Bond video game, as well as the unrevealed project codenamed Project Fantasy.
