"Over 2 billion matches restored": I'm diving back into my Bungie-era Halo stats with this incredible fan-made 'Halo Archive'

I spent well over a thousand hours in Halo 3 alone, so seeing a group of dedicated fans restore over 1.9 billion Halo 3 match stats, 801 million Halo 2 matches, and more than 30 million Gamertags is kind of surreal.

This is a huge moment for me, and honestly, it’s incredibly impressive work from the Halo Archive. It hits especially close to home for me. If you’ve followed my work, you’ll know I’m a huge Halo fan, especially from the Bungie era.

The site is currently invite-only, but once you’re in, you can browse and search your old Halo stats just like you could on Bungie.net before that feature was removed. I’d definitely urge you to go show them some love over on X (formerly Twitter), and join their Discord.

Before you ask, as far as I can tell, there’s no inclusion of Halo: Reach. That said, what HaloArchive has pulled off here is nothing short of impressive, and it helps to understand the backstory behind it.

HaloArchive actually began back in 2014, when a user named Tactics created a script to download an entire player’s Halo 2 data. In 2018, the project took things further, kicking off an eight-month effort to pull Halo 2 carnage reports and store them as raw text files.

It wasn’t until 2021, though, when Bungie announced that stats were going offline, giving players only a few weeks’ notice to save their data. That moment pushed HaloArchive to adapt the original Halo 2 script for Halo 3, ultimately pulling all 1.9 billion matches.

Since then, HaloArchive, along with other contributors, has worked to restore both Halo 2 and Halo 3 datasets, sorting through more than 30 terabytes of raw text files. Now, the site is live and in testing, with access available if you sign up and get accepted.

As HaloArchive says, this project wouldn’t be possible without Tactics, Cyrix, Bigstack, members of the community, and more. A huge shoutout to everyone involved.

Do you like the idea of digging through your old match data for that hit of nostalgia, or are you not too bothered?

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