343 Industries says Halo Infinite bots aren't actually teabagging you even if it looks like they are

Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries says NPCs are definitely not programmed to teabag people, despite some rather unsavory footage to the contrary that's been making the rounds.

In an interview with Eurogamer, 343 firmly positioned itself as anti-teabagging - and yes, they actually used the word teabagging - describing the act as potentially exclusionary. You wouldn't think it would need clarifying, but because videos have surfaced showing a few unsportsmanlike Halo Infinite bots humiliating beta testers 2007 LAN party-style, 343 has confirmed that it hadn't intended for NPCs to teabag players.

"Bots are primarily a part of Halo Infinite to help players learn and experiment with the multiplayer experience," a spokesperson for 343 said. "We want players to feel comfortable making mistakes against bots, because making mistakes means you're improving and working on skills you haven't mastered yet.

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"We never want to punish learning, especially not by having bots engage in behaviors that a player could feel is exclusionary. For that reason, we don't have explicit programming that tells the bots to teabag or taunt you in any way."

Now, onto the prosecution, which humbly presents Exhibit A, B, and C for your judgment:

the_bots_have_learned_how_to_bag from r/halo

Well, it sure looks like these Halo Infinite bots are teabagging folks, don't it? On the contrary, 343 explained that it's actually just a glitch where an NPC will occasionally squat in rapid succession instead of jump as intended. "An example of what could look like teabagging is a bug with bot traversal that was in the technical preview build," 343 said.

"It caused bots to fail to successfully jump and clamber on the edge of stairs or ramps. A bot's feet would leave the ground very briefly, then play a landing animation when they failed the jump, and they'd get stuck in an animation loop that could look like crouching rapidly. If that happened to be observed shortly after a kill, or near a player's body, it can definitely feel like an intentional behavior. In reality, the bot was just struggling to go up the stairs."

So that settles it; Halo Infinite bots aren't trolling you, they're just silly little glitchy goobers right now. Or, maybe they're just covering their asses by being like, "oh, that was totally just a glitch, we would never..." *wink, wink*.

For what it's worth, we didn't see any teabagging in our Halo Infinite multiplayer preview,