Agent 47 may often find himself covered in red, but Hitman 3 is already in the black. Developer IO Interactive revealed in a GamesIndustry.biz interview today that the game is generating enough revenue to begin earning a profit. This comes after the game was one of the few major releases in the first month of 2021. Hitman 3 launched at No. 1 on the physical U.K. sales chart.
This is the first time IO has developed and published a game without help from a major label. And the company is claiming that move is paying off.
“It has been a labor of love between our fans and everyone at the studio,” IO chief executive officer Hakan Abrak told GamesIndustry.biz. “As the developer and publisher, we are immensely proud that we can say Hitman 3 is already profitable. We have recouped the total project costs in less than a week. That puts us in a really good place and allows us to confidently move forward with our ambitious plans for future projects.”
Those future projects include the previously revealed 007 game. The company is moving onto that game next. That means that Hitman will likely get some time off even despite its success. IO has called Hitman 3 the end of the current trilogy.
Now, IO is staffing up and starting a new team to ensure it can build a solid take on the adventures of James Bond.
IO Interactive is now a successful publisher
IO Interactive was a Square Enix studio when it released Hitman in 2016. The two companies parted shortly after that, and then IO worked with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for 2018’s Hitman 2. But now IO is doing all of that work itself.
“We’ve been able to create a game that our players will love and bring it to them in the most direct way possible: developed and published by IOI,” said Abrak. “Having that focus early on has kept us on a path that we all believed in,” he said. “Everyone at the studio was behind the vision for the game and they know the Hitman universe better than anyone.”
Abrak says that acting as both developer and publisher makes sense because everyone working at IO understands what their games need to succeed.
“That combination makes us very effective as a publisher because we have our creative and development teams working closely with publishing and marketing throughout the entire project,” he said. “We need that collaboration because we all want to create a quality product.”
The leadership at IO is happy with the results, and they plan to continue using this self-publishing model going forward.
“We demand of each other that our games are hand-crafted, meticulously detailed and unique,” said Abrak. “At this point, we’d be doing our community a disservice if we delivered anything less than that. They’re used to us setting a really high bar for quality and memorable experiences, so we keep that mentality at the front of our mind — not only for Hitman but also our future projects.”
