Please do not connect multiplayer shenanigans into my Doom campaign. It seems vanishingly rare nowadays to get a AAA shooter with as much, if not more, love put into its campaign mode, if it has one at all. Have your death match LAN parties all you like, keep the dream of the 90s alive and all, but I’m not too proud to beg that it stay its own disconnected thing.
I’m speculating, and certainly not a business expert, so heaping handfuls of salt comes with this statement: I think part of the problem that led to this is that each game was published by a different entity. Square published 2016, then put the devs up for sale the following year, citing underperformance. IO buys itself out and becomes independent, but needs capital to get Hitman 2 across the finish line. Enter a publishing deal with Warner Bros. That game proves successful enough that Hitman 3 is able to be self-published.
Considering IO’s concept of this World of Assassination trilogy was always that it would have certain online-only or live servicey features, and I assume that publishers often provide the necessary infrastructure for these things, I wonder if the rotating chair of publishers is to blame for making this process so much more obtuse than it needs to be.