im gonna stick to my old hitman games on disc thanks rule

Psst.
You didn't hear it from me, but there's a tool called the Peacock Project that lets you self-host (effectively) the backend for the game. Big up to the folks who put it together, it's a life saver
- yea i am trying that, but i will remain pissed off that this is the case. and those who defend it, not caring about us where internet isnt reliable or fast
  
  Oh it's definitely a systemic issue for sure, I loathe it with a passion as well.
- I remember way back when EA told everyone Simcity 2013 require always online because "the simulation was so advance, it had to run on servers!" Yet it was just 2 months later, people reverse engineered the "server" and i was able to play for game on my complete peice of shit laptop... so much for advance simulation.
  
  SimCity getting absolutely annihilated from existence be releasing a corrupt flop of a game just before city skylines offered a much better base game out of the box is something I wish would happen more with games that singularly rule their subgenre (The Sims, I'm looking at you).
- Does this let you play freelancer normally? I assumed the online requirement was because freelancer could let you play on maps you don’t own.
  
  I've been playing freelancer without issue, but I'm afraid I have no idea how it works if you only own, say, half the maps it uses.

I love steam. but something you need to realize is, the community is just gamer facebook.
every idiot, shitposter, racist, bigot, propagandist, and cousin-fucker is on there and outside of a few specific cases, allowed to say whatever they want.
- Better to compare it to gab than Facebook. Steam community supports and allows way worse shit than Facebook because they have no advertisers who will pull out if the site is crawling with Nazis.
  I saw someone saying literal Nazi shit and it never got taken down 😬
  
  Better to compare it to gab than Facebook. Steam community supports and allows way worse shit than Facebook because they have no advertisers who will pull out if the site is crawling with Nazis.
  As a general rule, Steam itself doesn't moderate their forums - game forums are moderated by the dev/publisher or whoever they designate, and user communities are moderated by whoever runs that community or whoever they designate, barring content that is actually illegal in the US (like CP) which Steam will actually take action on. Steam will rarely moderate user profiles, but only if it's extremely egregious.
  
  one of the worst ones, for a game I still somewhat care about is Arma 3
  the community section and to some extent the workshop, have become a free speech zone for russian fascist war propaganda.

I enjoy the game but these practices need calling out. I didn’t realise how bad it was when I purchased it. The whole marketing for this game is awful as well, it’s the first game I’ve needed a user made guide to show me which version to purchase.
Honestly in many aspects the old games are far superior anyway. So many awesome levels. Strongly recommended checking out Blood Money Reprisal on iOS and Android as well.
- oo i will check it out
  and yea it was confused as fuck to find what game to get. its apparently world of assasination but u also need chapters which are dlc but also not really. its stupid and hard for no reason. only matched by how confusing buying an xbox is
  
  Yepp it’s pretty ridiculous. I purchased most of the game but still missed on 3 DLC levels I wanted purely because the cost to add them was ridiculous.
- Interesting - how are the old games better? To me, the World of Assassination trilogy is peak hitman, a condensation of all they've learned from the past many games, and an all-round improvement on Blood Money.
  
  Oh I hear you, the new hitman games are far from bad, and I agree with you they are kinda a culmination of lessons learned in the previous games.
  The main thing which bothers me is the handholding, where it comes up “mission story revealing” and then guides you. I’d love to at least pretend I’m working it out for myself. I understand you can turn that off, but I’ve also read online that doing so skips some story dialogue, would love it to turn out that’s wrong.
  It’s also down to personal preference for me; I just happen to prefer some of the levels from the classic games. I also dislike the UI and general vibe of the new ones, how it feels like a live service. I appreciate my word choice of “superior” was overly strong in hindsight, I really meant it subjectively and was not trying to make a reaching claim. Both classic and new are very good, marketing and DRM aside.

https://thepeacockproject.org/
Annoying that something like this is needed, but still pretty cool that talented coders stepped up and made it happen.

I was a huge fan of the Hitman series. I haven't bought a Hitman game since they switched to the always online, buy the gamepass, dark pattern crap.
- The newest games are genuinely the best in the genre. The live service parts are very interesting ways to build on the fanmade blood money contracts, and experiment with the genre, but ultimately not worth the always online requirements.
  That being said, the games are hardly predatory. Genuinely the best Hitman has ever been.

Wait, what "new" Hitman game? Isn't the last Hitman game like five years old? Did I miss something?
- 2021 was barely yesterday, so it's new. Now get off my lawn!
  
  Hah. On the one hand, it seems like it wasn't that long ago. On the other hand, it was a lifetime away. Hey, remember Covid?
- the new one came out in 2022, for me thats current releases. old is like pre 2018 minimum :p
  
  I think Hitman is in this weird haze where... yeah, there was a game's worth of new content three years ago, but it was just the same engine and even inside the same launcher as 1 and 2, so that's just been an ongoing thing since 2016, so it feels older than it is, even discounting how far away 2022 feels right now for other reasons.
  Still, you said "new Hitman" and got me excited. I guess it's back to waiting for the inevitable cancellation of that 007 thing they're supposed to be doing now.
- Its new since if it was released today it would be basically the same game. This is because compared to most of gaming history, there are barely no innovations gameplay, physics or visuals wise anymore. Kinda like in cinema where a lot of the films are either a remake or coloring book character movie.
- Hitman 2025. Is the same as past year, but this time it's title says 2025 instead of 2024.
  
  Still confused. Hitman 2025 seems to be a Jason Statham movie. Hitman World of Assassination is IO's weird episodic game thing where they released Hitman 2 and 3 in this strange, convoluted platform that was meant to drop a map per month, which didn't really work, so they rolled back to doing full price games.
  I don't like that, there's a reason I did finish the first season with the monthly episodes but not the other two "games". The whole platform framework is also incredibly convoluted and impractical. Great games, messed up wrapper and release strategy.
  If they changed something this year (or last year) I didn't hear about it.

They gave that cunt and elderly abuser Conor McGregor money to put him in of the DLC’s of the game. So fuck IOI I will never buy a game from them.
- They got rid of him. ¯(ツ)_/¯
  
  They still gave him money, even before that rape verdict he had a history of abuse.

I adore the game otherwise, but totally agreed.
It's especially egregious when cutscenes are interrupted by "Reconnecting" bullshit.
Peacock works great and even adds some of its own content. But it's unconscionable that it's even needed in the first place.
- I love the franchise but they really fucked it all up.
  
  What do you dislike about the most recent 1-3/WOA other than the online requirement and the microtransaction bullshit?
  to be clear, either of those alone are a totally valid dealbreaker!
  
  The sims.

the main reason it got review bombed on gog, and evetially got banned from the store

And the worst is: your saves are not even stored in your IOI account: A Steam save is not visible on EGS and vice versa.
It seems the "always online" feature is just for the leaderboards, alias the stuff I don't give a fuck about.
This is a shame because Hitman WOA is really great.

I like nu hitman and it's the best hitman by far but I wish the always online pissed me off as badly as the terrible key remapping, which is only second to cyberpunk.
- cyberpunk keymapping isn't the best out-of-the-box, but it's completely customizable...still could be a lot better...
  
  It was not the last time I used it. Tons of hard bound and duplicate keys I needed to edit the .cfg for.

I return any single player game that requires online connection. As long as you play under 2 hours, steam will give a full refund.

Just clicked on this because of Whitty. In my opinion, it's one of the best FNF mods I've seen. When I first saw it I even thought it was official! Well, too bad it ended…

I was gonna buy it until I learned about that. instead I pirated it and play using Peacock.

Inherently Steam Reviews are usually inclined to support the game. Because they're from people who bought the game and are thus pressured to support their decision which they feel starts to represent them. There's a inclination that a defense of the game is a defensive them. This is especially true when controversies involved and when the game's more expensive. When it's cheaper it's easier to circumvent this.
- so the support for this i found on steam community posts for the game. where people were asking if there's a way to run freelancer mode offline. and comments were support always online decision and calling it as genuis anti piracy decision... which is ridiculous

people defending steam are built different.
badly, but different.
- This isn't normal for Steam, though, it's something the game dev/publisher/owner implemented (even if Steam is somewhat complicit in allowing it at all). Most single player games on Steam still work when you're offline.
- Steam on the whole is alright, obviously there are things that could be better but it works well as a centralised distribution platform with some nice extras. Ofc it's still DRM but it's probably the best way you're ever going to see said DRM.
  
  "steam" isn't DRM: it supports DRM, but it's not DRM in itself. it offers the option to devs, and many use it, but it's entirely optional.
  saying steam "is DRM" is misinformation.