Hitman 3’s Freelancer mode delayed again, but you’ll have the chance to try it soon

polygon.com:

Those of you eagerly awaiting the launch of Hitman 3’s Freelancer mode will have to wait just a little bit longer. In a blog post published on Tuesday, developer IO Interactive announced that the launch of Freelancer, the upcoming rogue-like single-player mode for Hitman 3, will be pushed back from the “second half of 2022” to January 2023.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that next month, IO Interactive will select a handful of Hitman 3 players on Steam for a “Closed Technical Test” of the new mode, which will allow players to once again assume the role of master assassin Agent 47 as they build their own customizable safe house and tour across the world hunting down master criminals.

“The Closed Technical Test is all about putting our servers under stress to prepare for launch,” the blog post states. “We also want to get an early idea of player behavior and do some economy / XP balancing in a real-life scenario on a big scale. These are the final checkboxes we need to tick off before we launch.”

Freelancer mode was originally slated to be released in spring 2022 before being delayed to the “second half of 2022.” IO Interactive has released several free updates to Hitman 3 since it first launched in January 2021, including the game’s first post-launch map back in July.