You probably can’t kill the real Jean-Claude Van Damme with a single apricot. You can, however, kill Van Damme’s digital doppelganger that way in Hitman: World of Assassination. The actor and martial artist stars in an Exclusive Contract as former ICA operative and rogue agent Max Valliant. The game boasted a million active players last December, according to IO Interactive, and it’s easy to see why. Hitman has one of the best live-service plans in all of gaming, with a steady stream of new locations, contracts, and celebrity appearances. Here’s how IO Interactive keeps slaying the live-service model.
Celebs Help Hitman Find Live-Service Success
The player with the longest completion time took more than seven hours to murder Max Valliant. The one with the shortest time took just 21 seconds. In IO’s lethal puzzle box, you can plot the perfect poisoning and vanish like a ghost or play Patrick Bateman with an axe. Hitman: World of Assassination is a sandbox game, and IO keeps tossing in new toys. Add in the exceptional roguelike mode Freelancer and sniper missions, and several thousand hours of your life can get ghosted. Celeb collaborations like Van Damme’s have been a huge hook on Hitman‘s line, and players keep biting.
2024 featured some heavy-hitters. Leave it to a pro kickboxer to go blow for blow with them. Time-limited events, themed contracts, and new cosmetics and weapons are solid offerings. It’s the intricate Exclusive Contracts like Van Damme’s, however, that may be the biggest draw in Hitman. Failing locks you out of these contracts for good. The celebrities featured as targets? Sean Bean, Gary Busey, and Gary Cole, among others. It’s a high-stakes mode that rewards players for their proficiency, planning, and murderous improv skills. It’s also the perfect pairing of FOMO and Hitman‘s already lethal gameplay loop. Pack your pistols and poison, because 2025 looks like another killer year for IO Interactive.
