10 Insane Video Game Marketing Campaigns That Actually Happened
5. Hitman Absolution - An 'Assassinate Your Friends' App Was Released
After four fairly solid Hitman games featuring a lot of sneaking up on people, killing with household items, and wearing other people's clothes, gamers had to wait 6 years before the long-awaited 5th Hitman instalment. As part of the promotional campaign, a Hitman Facebook app was released and it worked a treat in generating a buzz. Unfortunately, it was not the buzz Square Enix was hoping for.
The app was called 'Hire Hitman' and it basically allowed users to identify, threaten, and targeting their Facebook friends for virtual 'assassination'. That's already pretty bad but it managed to get worse when the app asked users for their reasons to 'kill' a friend and methods for identifying their friends.
Reasons can include 'they smell bad' or 'they're cheating' whilst methods of identifying female friends included admittedly funny ways such as "her hairy legs", "her muffin top", and "her small breasts". Identifying male friends included admittedly even funnier ways such as "his ginger hair", "his sh*t hair", and "his tiny penis". Unfortunately, not everyone is so accepting of such identification tags and the app was quickly taken down.
With a new Hitman game coming out soon, hopefully Square Enix and IO Interactive have learned that asking people to target their friends for 'assassination' isn't the best way to drum up interest, no matter how funny it is.