As Halo Infinite cheating begins, console players call on 343 to let them disable crossplay
A chief concern.
Halo Infinite multiplayer is out in the wild - and cheating has already begun.
Players have reported coming across cheaters in 343's free-to-play competitive shooter, whose multiplayer is still flagged as being in beta.
Twitch streamer Douglas "DougisRaw" Wolf tweeted a clip of himself watching a clip of a run-in with a Halo Infinite cheater using what looks like an aimbot and a wallhack.
Redditor KanoxHD took to the Halo sub to reveal a clip of another player using an aimbot:
There are already aimbots after less than a week, this is worrying. What do you guys think ? from r/halo
Here are some more reports of cheating in Halo Infinite:
Video game cheating is usually more prevalent on PC, although it does go on on console, and it's usually more prevalent in free-to-play games compared to premium games. Now, with the emergence of cheating in Halo Infinite, some console players are calling on 343 to add the ability to turn off crossplay with PC.
Halo Infinite does not let you turn off cross-play between PC and Xbox. However, in ranked arena players can choose whether they want to play with mouse and keyboard players or controller players. While this potentially leads to longer matchmaking times, some console players are setting up their games to play with controller players only in a bid to make it less likely they'll run up against PC cheaters.
Of course, PC players can play with a controller on Halo Infinite. There is currently no way for Xbox players to avoid playing with PC players who use a controller.
"This is one of the reasons many console users choose to not play on PC," said redditor Meiie in a post on r/XboxSeriesX titled "Now that cheating in Halo is confirmed on PC, can we have to option to opt out of cross-play?"
"Besides the ease of playing on console, avoiding PC cheaters has been my biggest reason for not playing on PC. Destiny, Warzone, BF, Apex.. tons of cheaters on PC. Never run into any when playing on console and opting out of cross-play.
"This is really important and I think not getting this option now is gonna spiral pretty hard into us players, on console, having to deal with infestation of cheaters currently on PC."
We've been here before. Last year, we reported on how Call of Duty: Warzone console players were turning off crossplay to escape PC cheaters. Cheating went on to blight Warzone, leading to Activision to announce a new anti-cheat system to go live in-game soon.
343 and Microsoft will be desperate to avoid Halo Infinite suffering similar reputational damage. Game companies face an uphill battle in the fight against cheating, but the hope is Halo Infinite can mitigate cheating as much as possible in the months ahead.