Developers say Halo Infinite cheaters were expected and will be dealt with

[Cal Jeffrey]

Editor's take: Cheating is a part of F2P gaming. Show me a multiplayer online game, and I'll show you a bunch of cheaters. As such, it becomes tricky for developers to address cheating, especially when they are in the process of handling so many other issues that come with the release of a game in beta.

Developer 343 Industries has finally acknowledged that it needs to address the rampant cheating in Halo Infinite's multiplayer beta, and it will. In a Wednesday tweet, 343 Community Manager John Junyszek said the dev is aware of the cheating situation and plans to do something about it but did not get more specific about how long it would take.

"Let's talk about cheating," tweeted Junyszek. "Unfortunately, cheating is a natural part of supporting a F2P PC game and it's one we anticipated. It'll never go away entirely, but we're prepared and committed to releasing consistent improvements to our game's systems and taking action on bad actors."

Jumping in to clarify that the wording of "improvements to game's systems" includes not only our anti-cheat, but the rest of the game as well. It's worded this way because we don't take a "single feature" approach, but a game-wide approach to anti-cheat.

— John Junyszek (@Unyshek) November 30, 2021

He later clarified that "improvements to our game's systems" means 343 takes a "game-wide" rather than a "single-feature" approach to combating cheating. In other words, the devs are working on cheat mitigation simultaneously with other systems in the game.

Indeed, cheating is not the only problem that Halo Infinite's multiplayer mode is facing. Players have also been agonizing about the game's progression system. Last weekend, Head of Design Jerry Hook tweeted that fixing Halo's broken progression system is at the top of his to-do list after the Thanksgiving break.

Yes I am still playing Halo and feeling everyone’s pain on progression. We are back at it next week and this will be top of my list with the team.

— jerry hook (@hookscourt) November 28, 2021

"Yes, I am still playing Halo and feeling everyone's pain on progression. We are back at it next week, and this will be top of my list with the team," Hook tweeted.

The response comes just days after the media picked up on numerous complaints from players frustrated with the cheating that has been unchecked since shortly after the beta's launch. Xbox players are particularly unsettled because the cheats are coming from PC players, and they would just as soon see crossplay turned off immediately.

There are even claims saying that cheat vendors are selling hacks that add paid cosmetic items for free. TechSpot has not confirmed this, but if true, it would put cheat suppliers directly in Microsoft's crosshairs as it amounts to theft by any legal standard.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/92454-developers-halo-infinite-cheaters-expected-dealt.html

 

[Shadowboxer]

I’m a huge Halo fan, my late teens were filled with Halo parties (CE) and the game means a lot to me. Now I’ve been playing infinite, it’s a good game but it is not Halo. It sounds like Halo, the guns have the same names as Halo guns and they look quite similar. But this game is COD with a halo skin. It’s quite fun and I enjoy it more than most online shooters but Halo this is not. The maps are far too small, the guns aren’t varied enough, the vehicles are not prominent. It’s a shame.

 

[Dimitriid]

Is this peer to peer multiplayer based? It certainly sounds like it if "cheaters were expected"

I also would expect this to require so much active babysitting and manual ban waves that it will be basically dead as soon as it stops getting regular updates which can happen well, who knows? Maybe several years, maybe far earlier than that for the PC version

 

[Guberian]

Public relations statements should never be taken at face value.

 

[Guberian]

I’m a huge Halo fan, my late teens were filled with Halo parties (CE) and the game means a lot to me. Now I’ve been playing infinite, it’s a good game but it is not Halo. It sounds like Halo, the guns have the same names as Halo guns and they look quite similar. But this game is COD with a halo skin. It’s quite fun and I enjoy it more than most online shooters but Halo this is not. The maps are far too small, the guns aren’t varied enough, the vehicles are not prominent. It’s a shame.

True at I played halo for a little bit on the default map and its just open space with three lanes cut up with a few walkways and a staircase going around a spire at one end. And then annoying not clearly marked places where you can fall into water and die.

 

[winjer]

Companies need to give back to the community, the tools to manage their own servers.
No software solution will ever be good enough to detect and deal with cheaters.
Just allow gamers to run their servers, with the tools to monitor players, just like we used to have years ago.

 

[Kotters]

The biggest cheat is the aim assist

 

[Uncle Al]

I quit playing Halo because of the cheaters and never looked back. Too many of these companies promise "to deal with them" which might result with a slap on the wrist. When you ban them for life, then I'll look at it again, but nothing less .....