Good news for HITMAN Linux fans. IO Interactive has confirmed that it has been able to retain the copyright to the famous video game and that it has now become a fully independent development studio. This has been officially confirmed and made public after a press release. This is huge news for the Linux world, not only because of the HITMAN title itself, but because by becoming an independent studio, and hopefully they will continue to work with Feral Interactive, dedicated to bringing more titles to Linux.
En the notice you could read «Therefore I am proud to announce today that IOI is now officially an independent studio. We have successfully concluded negotiations with Square Enix and have agreed to a management purchase. Fundamentally, we will maintain all the intellectual property rights of HITMAN. ». That's good for IOI, as there was a period of cutbacks and uncertainty at Square Enix, so now by being independent from it they will be able to have more freedom without this elimination of funds for these developers.
IOI will surely start to create good games as we are accustomed to, and if these come to Linux, then better than better. An example is the famous HITMAN that we have already talked about on other occasions in this blog and that you can enjoy on Linux as you know. However, we should take the news in stride, as all the optimism could turn into bad news, as Square Enix is quite Linux-friendly, and some have doubts as to whether IOI will continue to be. I hope these bad omens are not fulfilled.
What is certain is that despite having taken giant steps in the field of video games for Linux in the last 3 years, with thousands of titles already and each time of better quality, it is true that there are still not too many large studios and developers that focus on Linux. We only see a greater interest and they port some of their video games to our platform. However, step by step you can go very far ...