IO Interactive

• 1. Introduction

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  IO Interactive A/S, known as IOI, is a Danish video game developer and publisher based in Copenhagen. As of June 2025 it employed over 500 people. Its most recent game, 007 First Light, was released in 2026. The studio is best known for two franchises, Hitman and Kane and Lynch. Yet the company began as something far smaller and far less certain, with an idea its first backers did not want it to build. This documentary asks how a team that started with an unfinished vision grew into a studio of that size. It asks why the people who owned it kept changing. And it asks what IOI chose to make once it was free to decide for itself.

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• 2. Seven Founders

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  In 1997, a Copenhagen developer named Reto-Moto was founded, and in 1998 it still had no finished game to its name. That year it struck a partnership with the Danish film studio Nordisk Film. The two agreed to create a jointly owned developer, and IO Interactive was established on the 16th of September 1998.

  Reto-Moto's seven employees became the founders and the first staff. They were Jesper Vorsholt Jørgensen, Rasmus Guldberg-Kjær, Martin Munk Pollas, Karsten Lemann Hvidberg, Jacob Andersen, Janos Flösser and David Guldbrandsen. Nordisk Film and the seven founders each held a 50% stake. By March 2004, Nordisk Film's share stood at 40.3%.

  Rex Dominus was the first project the team conceived, a fantasy massively multiplayer online game, usually shortened to MMO. Staff at Nordisk Film asked them to stop work on it. Their instruction was to "test themselves" by making a "simple shooter" instead.

  The films of John Woo, including Hard Boiled and The Killer, shaped the team's choice of a run-and-gun action game. That style took less time to build than an MMO. The developers aimed at personal computers because they could not obtain development kits for consoles. They were also intrigued by the steady improvement in the 3D graphics of PCs.

  That shooter would become Hitman: Codename 47, and its most unusual feature began with a problem about how bodies fall.

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• 3. Ragdolls and Glacier

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  Building Glacier, the studio's own game engine, became part of making the game that would turn into Hitman: Codename 47. Co-founder Jacob Andersen explained the thinking behind the falling bodies: "Since killing was the main theme of the game, we wanted to do something special."

  Andersen recalled that ordinary death animations looked too static to the team. Some of the coders tried real-time inverse kinematics for collapsing bodies instead. The first versions ran terribly slowly, until one programmer found a way to fake the whole calculation. The result was the first use of advanced ragdoll physics in a video game.

  At the British publisher Eidos Interactive, staff member Jonas Eneroth noticed the system. He thought it could greatly benefit the gameplay of Codename 47. After six months of negotiations, Eidos and IO Interactive signed a publishing deal, and Eneroth became the project's executive producer.

  Eneroth arrived with experience on Deus Ex and Thief: The Dark Project, two games that had steeped him in stealth mechanics. He urged the team to move away from run-and-gun play toward what he called a "methodical experience". One example was dragging dead bodies around a scene to build tension.

  Hitman: Codename 47 came out on the 19th of November 2000. Reviews were mixed, largely because of the game's difficulty. A sequel would be announced within a year.

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• 4. Eidos Years

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  Eidos Interactive announced Hitman 2: Silent Assassin in October 2001, a sequel to Codename 47. After a slight delay, it was released in October 2002 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Bringing the game to consoles forced IO Interactive to grow "considerably" in headcount. Critics responded well. Greg Kasavin wrote in his GameSpot review that "Hitman 2 fixes virtually all of the problems of its predecessor". The success surprised the team, and a GameCube port followed the next year.

  In 2003, IO Interactive decided to open a Hungarian offshoot named IO Interactive Hungary. It hired 50 Hungarian staff and brought them to the Copenhagen headquarters for a six-month training programme. Afterwards the company realised that these 50 talented people had no leadership to guide them back in Hungary. It dropped the subsidiary and offered all 50 jobs in Copenhagen, which most accepted.

  In October 2003, Electronic Arts released Freedom Fighters, a third-person shooter developed by IO Interactive. It had been announced in May 2002 under the title Freedom: The Battle for Liberty Island. A sequel has long been anticipated, but the studio has been unable to comment on whether one is in development.

  On the 3rd of March 2004, Eidos Interactive announced that it was acquiring IO Interactive for cash and stock, plus a further payment tied to the studio's performance over the next four years. The deal closed on the 31st of March. At the time, IO Interactive was Europe's 10th largest video game developer, with 140 staff. Founding member Flösser primarily negotiated the sale.

  Hitman: Contracts, the third Hitman game, was announced and released in April 2004. It was built in about nine months from concept to console submission, under crunch time throughout. Reception was positive. Hitman: Blood Money followed, announced in November 2004 and released in May 2006. Critics praised it, and multiple retrospectives call it the best game in the series. It would remain the benchmark against which later Hitman games were measured.

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• 5. Divergent Paths

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  Announced in August 2006, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men broke sharply from the Hitman template. It was a linear, cooperative third-person shooter, whereas Hitman offered solo stealth in a sandbox. Released in November 2007, it drew mixed reviews. Some critics felt it had a disconnect with modern gameplay styles.

  On the 11th of April 2008, four of the co-founders announced that they had reformed Reto-Moto as an active developer. They were Vorsholt Jørgensen, Pollas, Andersen and Guldbrandsen. Together with Neil Donnell, a former Eidos executive producer, they restarted the company. Guldbrandsen became chief technology officer and Donnell chief executive officer. Six more IO Interactive employees followed them in December that year.

  Flösser, the co-founder who had negotiated the Eidos sale, left his post as managing director in April 2008. Niels Jørgensen, who had joined the company in 2002, succeeded him.

  In January 2009, Eidos Interactive announced Mini Ninjas, a family-friendly game unlike any of the studio's earlier titles. Jørgensen explained that the studio wanted to reach a broader demographic in the gaming market.

  In April 2009, Japanese conglomerate Square Enix acquired Eidos Interactive. Eidos was reorganised during 2009 and became Square Enix Europe in November that year. It continued to oversee its development studios, including IO Interactive. Speaking for the studio, Karsten Lund said it had experienced "no loss of freedom".

  Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days was announced in November 2009 and released in August 2010. Critics noted that most of its elements had been deliberately made "ugly" to suit the game's story.

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• 6. A Shrinking Studio

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  A November 2009 interview with the website Gamasutra revealed where much of the studio's art was made. Because living costs in Scandinavia are high, Jørgensen said, much of the graphics department had been outsourced to Shanghai. Two Danish representatives had set up the Chinese office, and one Dane lived there permanently to oversee the work.

  In March 2010-35 of the company's previous 200 employees were let go. A further 30 people were laid off in November that year, supposedly because a project in development for Microsoft was cancelled.

  In May 2011, IO Interactive and Square Enix announced a return to Hitman with Hitman: Absolution. A spin-off demo, Hitman: Sniper Challenge, was released in May 2012, and Absolution followed in November. Like Blood Money, it was received very positively by critics. Yet many fans, including developers at the studio, felt it leaned too far toward the mainstream and was losing the series' core players.

  In February 2012, Square Enix opened a new Copenhagen office under the IO Interactive name. The following March it was revealed to be Hapti.co, a subsidiary developing the Core Online cloud gaming service. Hapti.co was sold to Wargaming Mobile in September 2017 and renamed Wargaming Copenhagen.

  In June 2013-70 staff members, half of the workforce, were made redundant. The stated reason was "internal adjustments to face the challenges of today's market". Square Enix announced that the studio would now focus exclusively on new Hitman entries. Hannes Seifert, production director for the past three years, took over as studio head.

  At a June 2015 press conference, Sony announced a new Hitman game, simply titled Hitman, for December 2015. It slipped to March 2016 and was then switched to an episodic model. The first season ran for six episodes, starting in March 2016, with the last released in October 2016. Around then, Ryan Barnard, previously director of The Division, left Massive Entertainment to join the studio. It now had 170 employees and was the largest video game developer in Denmark.

  That peak was brief. Within months of the season's end, the studio's leadership began to change.

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• 7. Independence

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  Seifert announced in February 2017 that he was leaving IO Interactive to return to his home country of Austria. He planned to pursue an unannounced project. Hakan B. Abrak, also a former production director, took over as chief executive officer.

  In May 2017, Square Enix announced that it had withdrawn funding from the studio and would negotiate with investors interested in buying it. Several jobs were cut shortly afterwards. On the 16th of June 2017, IO Interactive announced a management buyout and became independent. Square Enix kept a minor financial stake.

  The buyout included the rights to Hitman and Freedom Fighters. It did not include Kane & Lynch or Mini Ninjas. Yosuke Matsuda, then president and chief executive officer of Square Enix, said the company felt the Hitman series needed to go on. In his view it would be in better hands with another partner or with IO Interactive itself.

  Eskil Mohl, the studio's associate director, said the team was already working on Hitman 2 when Square Enix withdrew. The job cuts, he said, were necessary to keep the studio viable without Square Enix's backing. Mohl felt the ordeal hardened the team to make Hitman 2 a stronger game.

  After the split, IO Interactive confirmed that all profits from the 2016 Hitman would go directly to the studio. In August 2017 it confirmed that another Hitman game was in development. In April 2018 it partnered with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to distribute a Definitive Edition of the 2016 game, released the following month.

  In June 2018, the studio announced Hitman 2. Unlike the 2016 game, it was not episodic. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment published it in November 2018. By October 2019, the partnership had grown into a multi-IP deal.

  In June 2020, IO Interactive announced Hitman 3, the conclusion to its World of Assassination trilogy. It was released on the 20th of January 2021 for Windows and current and next-generation consoles. This time the studio published the game itself.

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• 8. Bond and Beyond

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  In November 2020, IO Interactive announced Project 007, an original James Bond game made with the licensors MGM and Eon Productions. Studio director Hakan Abrak said the team had spent about two years preparing its pitch. He knew that the rights holders, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, were dissatisfied with the amount of violence in past Bond games.

  The studio's Bond would be a wholly original character, with none of the film actors' likenesses. Abrak expected it to be the start of a trilogy. He also expected the staff to double from 200 to 400 by the time the first game was released. The project was officially unveiled as 007 First Light in June 2025.

  Growth came partly through new branches. On the 16th of January 2019, the company opened IOI Malmö in Sweden. IOI Barcelona in Spain was announced in April 2021 to assist on active projects, including further Hitman entries and 007 First Light. IOI Brighton in England was announced in July 2023, initially to support First Light, Project Fantasy and Hitman. A fourth studio, IOI Istanbul in Turkey, completes the group.

  In February 2023, the company announced Project Fantasy, a new IP set to be an online fantasy RPG. It marks a departure from Hitman, and an idea that echoes Rex Dominus.

  In 2024, IO Interactive established IOI Partners, a publishing label. Its first announced project was MindsEye, from Leslie Benzies's Build A Rocket Boy. IOI handled the game's marketing and distribution, and MindsEye served as a demonstration of the Everywhere platform. Abrak said the game was well along in development. MindsEye was released in June 2025 to an overwhelmingly negative reception. In March 2026, IOI Partners ended its relationship with Build A Rocket Boy. It handed publishing back to the developer and cancelled a planned crossover with Hitman.

  Glacier, the engine born from those falling bodies, now powers the Hitman series, Freedom Fighters, both Kane & Lynch games, Mini Ninjas and 007 First Light. It supports DLSS, XeSS and FSR, and it handles ray tracing in Hitman 3. Eidos-Montréal licensed Glacier as the basis for its own in-house engine, Dawn Engine.

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