There are apparently enough players angry about the state of Halo Infinite’s multiplayer open beta that it has caused the entire Halo subreddit to shut down until Monday as a result of “toxicity on the sub from both sides [that has] made it impossible for people to have civil discussions,” with aggravation reaching the point of death threats and doxxing.
At the heart of the matter is a lack of game modes that won’t make it to the shooter’s final launch, especially the wildly popular Slayer deathmatch mode, along with extreme levels of grind for cosmetics and challenges that are proving difficult to complete. The anger has gotten to the point that 343 Industries community director Brian “Ske7ch” Jarrard put out a lengthy post both explaining problems and defending the dev studio’s decisions in equal measure.
“We have had people working their asses off for years to try and deliver the best Halo game they can amidst very challenging circumstances. […] It’s just not quite as trivial as ‘pushing a button.’ And at the scale and complexity of this game – any and every change could have monumental impact in a negative way without extensive testing. Triaging these feedback issues and finding ‘what CAN we do now’ is what the team is already doing and will continue doing.”
Community manager John Junyszek further talked about content plans for the future, with Fiesta, Tactical Slayer (SWAT), and Free-For-All playlists due to land sometime before year’s end, and a Social Slayer playlist that isn’t expected to land until after the holidays. Junyszek also talked about XP earning adjustments, admitting that initial session XP earnings are slower than the devs would like and detailing some increased XP payouts that went live last week.
The Halo subreddit post has links to other update plans touching on things like anti-cheat measures, desync problems, and stability improvements among other things. Halo Infinite itself is set to officially launch on Wednesday, December 8th.
