Halo Infinite needs strong anti-cheat, or it's in big trouble
Cheaters threaten to clip Halo Infinite's wings.

If there's one thing that's clear about Halo Infinite, it's that 343 Industries is aiming to propel the Halo franchise back into the limelight with what looks to be one of the most exciting multiplayer experiences ever (check out the Halo Infinite multiplayer gameplay reveal if you haven't already).
Between Halo Infinite's excellent approach to its battle passes, its three-month long seasons that give players plenty of time to engage with new content, its return to sandbox-driven gameplay that the original Halo games were famous for, support for 120 FPS on Xbox Series X|S, and support for crossplay between Xbox and PC, the game is poised to take both the casual and competitive gaming communities by storm when it launches later in 2021. But there's one thing that threatens to keep that from happening: a recent surge of hackers that have hit PC games hard, damaging gameplay integrity and generally making the experience frustrating for thousands of players.
Popular PC games like Destiny 2 have faced severe cheating issues in recent months.
Developers have generally been able to keep ahead of cheaters and their malicious tools for the last several years, but sadly, that has changed during the pandemic. The companies behind some of the largest shooter games on the PC platform have struggled to effectively counter the "new wave" of aimbots, wallhackers, and more that has crashed onto titles like Destiny 2, Valorant, Call of Duty: Warzone, and many more. Recently, Riot Games and Bungie teamed up to sue a cheating software creator, but it's clear that legal action alone won't solve this problem.
Even Valve's insanely popular CS:GO has seen an increase in cheaters recently, although its VAC countermeasures seem to be more effective than the solutions being used by other developers. The same can't be said about VAC in Team Fortress 2, however, as players have reported the presence of aimbots in nearly every matchmaking server for months. A recent update has alleviated the problem somewhat, but will the improved security hold?
One of the reasons why these games are suffering at the hands of cheaters so much is that the majority of them are free-to-play, meaning that making new accounts to continue cheating with after the banhammer comes down is incredibly easy. Halo Infinite's multiplayer will be free-to-play as well, meaning that 343 Industries will need to be prepared to combat this. Another concern is the game's cross-platform nature; if Halo Infinite fails to keep cheaters under control like many other PC games have, those cheaters could ruin the fun for players on PC and console. The developers have stated that the game will implement input-based restrictions for ranked matches, but just because a PC player has to use a controller to match with console players doesn't mean that cheating software won't work.
Notably, 343 Industries have commented on Halo Infinite's anti-cheat measures in a previous blog post. "We've done a lot of work securing the Slipspace engine and developing novel ways to protect and change the game to slow down cheat development," said Halo Infinite Security Engineer Michael VanKuipers. "When people do cheat, we're focused on catching them through their behavior ... Combating cheaters is an ever-evolving arms race, but we're making the tech investments needed today to continue the fight for years to come."
Halo Infinite's anti-cheat needs to be effective for the game to succeed.
Whether or not Halo Infinite's anti-cheat measures will be as effective as the developers are suggesting it will be remains to be seen, but if Microsoft and 343 Industries want Halo Infinite to be the game that truly puts Halo back on the map, they need to be, both in the short and long term. Halo's relevance will likely soar to new heights with Halo Infinite if the multiplayer is as fun as it looked during the Xbox E3 2021 show, but that's possible only if hackers don't clip the game's wings.
Cheaters completely ruin the experience for everyone, and if they're allowed to run rampant throughout servers, Halo Infinite's gameplay will be completely overshadowed by the hacker problem. Ultimately, I'm incredibly excited for the game's arrival later this year. But with complaints about hackers in PC games growing daily, I can't help but feel nervous, too. Hopefully the developers at 343 Industries are able to succeed where Bungie, Riot, and others have failed.
Halo Infinite looks like it's going to be one of the best Xbox games ever. We can't wait to play it when it comes to Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One consoles, and Windows 10 (and Windows 11) PCs later this year. You can preorder the game now for $60, but keep in mind that if you're only interested in the multiplayer, it's completely free-to-play.
A new Great Journey awaits
Halo Infinite is the biggest Xbox game of the year by far, and based on what we saw at E3 2021, it looks like it's going to be fantastic.
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Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he's been an avid fan since childhood. You'll find him doing reviews, editorials, and general coverage on everything Xbox and PC. Follow him on Twitter.
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Could they run the game in a sandbox that can't be affected by other programs? Just like on console?
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Not that simple on a PC as no matter how secure the DRM or anti-cheat. You can't stop values being changed real time in the RAM without sucking up alot of CPU cycles. Which are also needed to run the game so you effectively degrade performance a fair bit. Current work around I suppose is to have a constant buffer and two cores processing this and the rest of cpu works on the game behind this buffer. I'm not sure how devs can implement this... Also this work around limits a game to multiple cores and higher. Plus increases the power draw and thermals of the CPU by a significant margin. Perhaps with Zen 4 and DDR5 it may be possible... Who knows.
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I don't understand why some people would want to put so much effort into cheating at a video-game. Couldn't they just put the time and energy in to getting better at the game? Another thought is that if we didn't have this problem the devs could have either trimmed their budget and the cost of the game, or put that work into features and polish. The cheaters are ruining things for themselves, as well as for the rest of us.
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I'm not sure I understand this correctly. What would be the top game at the moment, and is there a strong anti-cheat for that game? Because for some reason I don't believe a game would be in trouble just because of this.
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You don't think that Halo's big return could be hamstrung by a rampant cheater problem that could affect both PC and console players?