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.