Streamers and esports athletes are speaking out against Halo Infinite’s growing community of cheaters and hackers. The newest installment in the Xbox franchise releases on December 8, but the free-to-play multiplayer component was recently launched early. While multiplayer has only been active for less than two weeks, Halo Infinite is already plagued by cheaters according to the vocal playerbase.
While the single-player campaign will release in December to detail the latest adventure of beloved alien-slayer Master Chief, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is available right now. Players on Xbox consoles and PC can access that portion of the game free of charge, but faster Battle Pass progression and some cosmetic items can only be purchased using real-world money. Unfortunately, hackers are also apparently appearing in some matches and using aimbot hacks to give themselves an unfair advantage over honest players. The request for an option to turn off crossplay between Xbox and PC is growing louder, as the PC version is much easier to hack. While Halo Infinite can ban Ranked players for a large number of offenses, this system and the game’s anti-cheat seem to have failed to sufficiently keep cheaters away.
Even notable streamers and esports players have reported run-ins with Halo Infinite cheaters. On November 24, 100 Thieves co-owner Jack “CouRage” Dunlop tweeted his disappointment at encountering his first cheater in-game. Call of Duty esports player James “Clayster” Eubanks and Halo pro kiffdog both reported similar encounters with hackers within the last few days. Meanwhile, Professional Valorant player Zlep managed to record a recent run-in with a cheater using an aimbot hack to near-instantly kill enemy players, demonstrating the severity of Halo Infinite‘s cheat problem.
Like Halo Infinite, many other popular FPS games suffer from cheating issues. Exploiting the game’s code to attain automatic aim, invulnerability, or enhanced movement can give unfair advantages to players in competitive multiplayer games. As one example of how to possibly combat this, the new Call of Duty anti-cheat system permanently bans cheaters from past, present, and future entries starting with Call of Duty: Warzone and Vanguard. This will hopefully decrease the number of repeat offenders and could be adopted by other developers in the future if successful, but the effectiveness of the new anti-cheat systems in Call of Duty and Halo Infinite have yet to be proven.
Since the game launched so recently, Halo Infinite‘s widespread cheater issue is a potential cause for concern. The proliferation of hacks will only increase moving ahead, so the Xbox game could soon be plagued by a wider assortment of Halo Infinite cheats. Developer 343 Industries is being pressured to provide a quick and effective solution, but requests for crossplay between PC and Xbox being made optional have yet to go answered.
Halo Infinite multiplayer is available for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC, and it will fully release on December 8, 2021.
Sources: Jack Dunlop/Twitter, Clayster/Twitter, kiffdog/Twitter, Zlep/Twitter