‘Hitman 3’ Steam launch met with backlash over pricing and VR issues

Since launching on Steam, Hitman 3 has been criticised by fans for controversial pricing and issues with its VR support.

Yesterday (January 20), Hitman 3 launched on Steam following a period of exclusivity on the Epic Games Store.

The launch has been met with anger from many fans on the platform, and Hitman 3 currently holds a ‘Mixed’ review tag on Steam. At time of writing, 58 per cent of Hitman 3‘s reviews are negative.

Many of these negative reviews criticise IO Interactive‘s choice to price Hitman 3 at £49.99, despite the game launching exactly a year ago. Although many players say that the game itself is good, they also raise issues with pricy DLC (downloadable content) that significantly raises the overall cost of the game for fans looking to get all of the content.

One review says the pricing is “beyond insulting” for fans who waited a year to buy the game on Steam, while another claims it’s “some of the worst pricing I have ever seen when the game is already out for 1 year and getting discounts on Epic”.

Outside of perceived issues with pricing, many reviews also name problems with its newly added VR support. Steam user ‘Vito‘ says that Hitman 3 is “unplayable in its current state in VR” and claims to be unable to progress through the tutorial due to “bugs/glitches”.

That sentiment is echoed elsewhere – one player accuses Hitman 3 of being “the worst VR port I’ve ever played”  and another says “the virtual reality movements at the moment are catastrophic”.

Backlash over the Hitman 3 re-launch has been so significant that the Hitman community subreddit has been locked. Although it’s now been changed, a message on the locked Hitman page previously read that it was due to the actions of some who were expressing anger with the game’s Steam launch.

In other news, Microsoft wants to revive old Activision Blizzard franchises following its £50billion acquisition.