IO had a cloud meeting group set up for all the employees on TEAMs, labeled “ Prelaunch Metacritic meeting”, where everyone has continued to follow incoming reviews of Hitman III at launch. Hakan says that the success of Hitman III was more than what they had estimated, and thought it was a combination of their hard work, their experience iterating for years on Hitman, and luck, such as release in January when no other Triple A game was being released for the new consoles. Hakan explained that likely when there is another IO studio it would be in another Scandinavian country such as Holland or Austria (where the former CEO now lives). Hakan believes that there is greater collegiality and teamwork if a studio is no more than 140 to 150 employees. Hakan describes how IO once had 400 employees at its Copenhagen location, and that there are now over 200 people now, with 150 in the Copenhagen studio and 50 in the new Malmo studio. There was even mention of moving Hitman to a free-to-play model, but it was not a model Hakan felt would work for Hitman. Second, Square Enix realized that the Hitman IP was too closely associated with IO, and the team of specialists who had 20 years of experience developing their Glacier Engine, and features like AI behavior and level design, that could not be replicated easily by another company. Hakan explains that Square Enix let IO keep the Hitman IP, because Square Enix kept a minority share of IO Interactive, a lottery ticket that is worth a lot of money now that Hitman 3 has been successful. Hakan’s primary concerns were for his employees at IO, and if it was best to sell IO Interactive to save jobs, he would have done it. It took four years for IO to recoup costs of Hitman2016, whereas it took one week to recoup costs of Hitman III. They had 174 employees and had to quickly let go of ~85 employees to stay solvent. At the time of being let go by Square Enix, IO had just 3 months left of cash flow, and there was discussions to divest IO Interactive and walk away. Hakan emphasizes how close IO was to bankruptcy. Hakan says that being at the company for so long, means that he has credibility with the team, because he can ask others to do things, having done many of those jobs as an employee at IO himself. It is a very Dutch and Danish thing to bike as a primary mode of transportation.
He comes across as grounded, and visually there was a white “Specialized” Mountain Bike in the background, which looked to be in his house near the back door. Rumor has it that IO could stand for Input-Output or IO, a moon of Jupiter.ĭiscusses his history at IOI, starting and working up through the company ranks to be CEO of IOI.
Hakan wasn’t a member of the founding members of IO and they haven’t revealed to him what IO stands for. Was asked what “IO” stands for in “IO Interactive”.
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