Sometimes it pays to report bugs, I guess!

Had to share this because it really tickled me.

When Freelancer Mode launched on January 26, 2023—almost two years ago now—it came with one bug that I found particularly annoying: the "ICA Outstanding Service Coin" was unobtainable. It would never show up in a shop to buy, and would never show up in the crate of tools as a post-mission reward. In the latter case, the game is supposed to randomly pick three tools that you don't yet have, of which you get to pick one. But even if your tool case was otherwise completely full, the reward tool crate would be empty every time.

It was a genuinely annoying item to not be able to get, because coins are absurdly useful tools in Hitman. And while there was another coin available in Freelancer Mode, it went up on the equipment wall instead of the tool case (and hence could be kept after a failed run) and cost 5,000 merces instead of 500. It was a bummer to have to use the expensive one rather than the cheap one, because if you lost it, there was a fairly steep cost to get it back. Whereas if I could have been using the one in the tool case, even if I lost it, I could likely get it back post-mission for free.

Players noticed the omission pretty quickly. Reddit and Steam threads popped up all over the place about this issue. And one PC player on Reddit even seemed to discover what the actual error was: a simple misspelling in the game's code.

With so many players noticing it, and since I also assumed IOI played enough of their own game to quickly notice the bug, I did nothing and assumed the issue would be quickly addressed in a patch.

And yet with every subsequent patch, I was continually astonished that this bug just never. Got. Fixed. A year passed and it was still there, despite the fact that this bug was so well-known amongst the playerbase that someone had created a PC mod on Nexusmods that added the missing coin just a few months after Freelancer's release, while console players like myself remained out of luck.

Yet more time passed, and a patch hit on September 11th, 2024 (roughly twenty months after Freelancer's release) which once again did not address the bug. Finally I decided that I'd had it, and that I'd report the issue myself, though I didn't have much hope that it would do any good; I honestly found it hard to believe that someone, probably multiple someones, had not reported this problem to IOI already, or that IOI somehow had not yet noticed it themselves, since it was pretty luminously obvious just from playing the game. But whether or not it actually led to a fix, at least this way I could tell myself that I'd done all I could.

I sent the following message to IOI support, along with the first two images above.

"ICA Outstanding Service Coin" is unobtainable

Sep 13, 2024, 08:18 GMT+2

This bug has existed since the release of Freelancer mode, and I kept assuming that IOI must already know about it and would eventually fix it. But it's almost two years later, a new patch just hit two days ago, and it still hasn't been fixed.

The bug is simple: the "ICA Outstanding Service Coin” is unobtainable in Freelancer Mode. It will never show up in the Supplier's shop, nor in the “pick one of three” tool chest after missions. There is a place for the coin in 47's Tool suitcase, but it remains forever empty.

(Note: the more expensive and persistent “Collector's Coin” that shows up on the equipment wall *is* obtainable, the issue is with the coin that shows up in the “Tools” suitcase.)

Someone in a Reddit thread pointed out that the bug is likely due to a simple spelling error in the game's code, where the TokenID is “PROP_TOOL_OUTSRANDING_SERVICE_COIN”. Note the misspelling of “Outstanding”. Fixing this typo may in fact correct the bug. Here is the link, I've also attached a screencap.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/comments/10zjh46/comment/j8afehn/

Again, I find it hard to believe that you guys don't know about this, if you've played your own game much in the past two years it would have been pretty hard to miss. But just in case…

Three hours later, I got the following response:

I'm Adrian from the HITMAN Support team.

Thank you for taking the time to reach out and bring this to our attention. I have now flagged this to our team so they have visibility on your report.

In the meantime, I hope you're having an otherwise good time in the World of Assassination!

Three months later, on December 12th, Hitman: World of Assassination got its first patch since the September 11th one. Lo and behold, the following appeared in the patch notes:

My Precious

Solved an issue where the ICA Outstanding Service Coin was unavailable in the Freelancer mode.

Was it my bug report that finally got IOI to fix this thing? I dunno, but I don't see why not. Maybe every other player was like me and assumed the bug was so obvious that no one ever actually reported it, thinking someone else already had. We'll never know for sure, but regardless, I'm tickled that the bug is finally fixed, and I suppose it goes to show that sometimes it pays to submit those bug reports!