Halo Infinite cheaters on PC cause cross-platform headaches

halo infinite Spartans heatwave — (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

Halo Infinite cheaters are already surfacing on PC, prompting concerns for players across all platforms thanks to the game's cross-platform matchmaking.

Halo Infinite came out in beta last week as a pleasant surprise to celebrate Halo and Xbox's 20th anniversary. A less pleasant surprise was the speed with which cheat makers adapted aimbot programs for use in Halo Infinite, allowing their users to see opponents through walls and snap their aim directly to them for near-automatic headshots (at least headshots only do extra damage when your shields are down).

Players on the up-and-up are using the Halo Infinite theater mode to see what it looks like from the cheater's point of view, and it's often even more blatant than you might expect. Here's one such video from KanoxHD on Reddit - keep in mind that this video only shows the standard in-game visuals, while the cheater's actual screen likely has overlays to give them the extra information.

there_are_already_aimbots_after_less_than_a_week from r/halo

Streamer DougisRaw also ran into cheaters while in the middle of placement matches for competitive mode, which adds extra insult to injury (the video has some foul language, as you might expect to hear from somebody getting aimbotted during placements).

So I tried my 10 placements on M+K for Halo..... pic.twitter.com/yV3hIqNBZhNovember 22, 2021

Halo Infinite's matchmaking is sorted by input rather than console, so these issues can affect players across Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S as well. Developer 343 Industries hasn't responded to the cheater concerns so far. However, it did lay out a commitment to anti-cheating measures in a pre-release PC version overview: "When you're making a competitive game and it's on PC, you need anti-cheat," principal software engineering lead Mike Romero says in the video. "That's all there is to it, it's gotta happen."