Hitman 3 is live, but players are having trouble bringing their progress from previous games forward before they can start playing.
Even more than most sequels, Hitman 3 is meant to be deeply tied to the games that came before it - you can import the levels from the earlier games if you own them on the same platform (though the studio is still working on a solution for moving from Steam to Epic Games Store). That includes carrying over your progress, item unlocks, and statistics via your IO Interactive account. Unfortunately, that account service is getting hit hard by early Hitman 3 players right now.
We're hard at work on getting IOI Account back online to enable progression carryover. We'll tell you when it's fully operational again. Please press F5 on Twitter instead of our site. We want it back up and running just as much as you do. Thanks! pic.twitter.com/4St0a2hYtQJanuary 20, 2021
For the time being, it seems nearly impossible to complete the process of migrating your progress into Hitman 3. You could always just wait to do it later, but there's one big problem with that idea as indicated by IO Interactive's pre-launch guide: "If you have already started playing Hitman 3 and then choose to perform the progression carryover process, you will lose all progression earned within Hitman 3 up to that point. We recommend you carryover progress before starting Hitman 3."
So you really shouldn't skip carrying over your progress into Hitman 3 for now unless a) you don't care about that old stuff or b) you just want to start assassinating targets ASAP and don't mind having to do it all over once your IOI account is back online.
Hitman 3 kicks off a big year - see what else we're looking forward to with our guide to new games 2021.