Bungie ignoring fans over Halo: Reach issue?

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The community-minded Halo dev has blanked seemingly innocuous fan questions for over a week now

This is odd. Very odd indeed. We’ve just had word from GamesRadar TwitteriteMunkeycopof some strange goings-on in athreadover at the official Bungie forums. The now-epic 10-pager was started last month by user A1BASE in order to get answers to a couple of fairly important questions to the Halo community, but so far, not a single member of Bungie staff has stepped up to even acknowledge the thread.

The desired knowledge? The answers to two simple questions regarding the upcoming Halo: Reach:

Above: RIght now, Master Chief is about as talkative as Gordon Freeman

It might seem fairly innocuous stuff, but for the Halo hardcore this info in serious business. After all, a lack of manual host selection for online multiplayer has plagued the series for years, as a few tales of laggy woe (and even lapsed fandom) attest in this very thread. Being such a long-standing issue, you’d think that a developer so famed for its caring, sharing community spirit as Bungie would have been right on top ofthis thread, but so far, nothing. As certain community members have stated, even a straight “No” would be better than ten pages of what currently looks like stonewalling indifference.

Above: Bottom of the tenth page, and still the question remains

By now, Bungie’s lack of interaction over the issue has become a running joke within the thread, the questions repeated so many times at this point as to almost become a standard post signature. Our favourite repackaging of the request? This, from Niall8r:

“Bungie, look, I don't get out much and I have no friends bar the ones in my head. Spending literally months rephrasing the same question over and over is something I have no problem with.

1) Roughly how much of the multiplayer code is reused from Halo 3?

2) Can we finally pick our own host in custom games?

What's the matter with you? Are you one of those strange companies that doesn't like money? All you have to do is post two answers and claim your £45”

But he speaks the truth. Acknowledgement, even in the form of “No comment at this time” rubber-stamp reply is all these guys want. Bungie can take the time to do that at least, surely?

We've e-mailed Bungie to try to get to the bottom of this one. We'll give you an update as soon as we hear anything. But until then, what do you think of this current strangeness? Let us know in the comments, or through our portals onFacebookandTwitter.

David Houghton
David Houghton
Long-time GR+ writer Dave has been gaming with immense dedication ever since he failed dismally at some '80s arcade racer on a childhood day at the seaside (due to being too small to reach the controls without help). These days he's an enigmatic blend of beard-stroking narrative discussion and hard-hitting Psycho Crushers.