Assassin droids were banned even before the Empire came to power, although many beings continued to use them. The very nature of their job necessitated highly adaptive, autonomous programming that unfortunately caused them to frequently turn on their masters. The droid programmers at Holowan Laboratories, however, developed new programming methods that they felt confident would keep their new line of assassin droids in check, even with their new sentience programming. Thus, the development of the IG-series assassin droids—also known as the Phlut Design Systems Project Phlutdroid—would become well known as an idea that went wrong with disastrous results. The droids were also similar to IG-72 and IG-97, but the IG-88 line was by far the most infamous.