With Concord in the rearview, Halo Infinite dev is glad it's still kicking "in a climate where games can be shut down with little notice"

Despite a rocky launch year, Halo Infinite is still alive and well - and one developer is particularly grateful for its enduring legs considering just how brutal 2024 was for struggling live service games.

"Lots to be thankful for in 2024," Halo Studios' senior community manager John Junyszek tweeted to usher in the new year. "After taking a step back to reflect, it's been great to see how much Halo Infinite improved this year. In a climate where games can be shut down with little notice, I'm happy that we were able to deliver so many player-requested features while also working on other future projects."

Junyszek goes on to call out the game's Forge improvements, that surprising third-person mode, new maps and weapons, fairer customization, and the return of a series favorite feature: Match Composer, which lets you queue for the exact modes you want in any given playlist. 

To catch you up, Halo Infinite had a stellar debut back in 2021 and even attracted more than 20 million players in its first few months, but things went downhill pretty quickly as 343 Industries (now in its Halo Studios era) struggled to fix what was broken, re-add missing features, or push out new post-launch content before most of its playerbase moved on. If 2024's taught us anything, it's that big publishers won't hesitate to pull the plug on a live service game if they can't immediately fund the next 30 generations of an executive's bloodline - look no further than Concord's shutdown - so in hindsight, Halo Infinite's relative longevity is somewhat surprising. 

But Halo Infinite entered 2024 as the full FPS package that was promised at launch, fully feature complete and fun as hell to play. And even though Halo Studios said support for Infinite would slow down more than a year ago, the shooter just got a throwback update that deletes sprint and adds classic maps in celebration of Halo 2's birthday.

In semi-related news, almost 100GB of classic Halo content leaked online over the holidays, including the famous 1999 demo from when the legendary FPS was a third-person Mac exclusive.