The community surrounding Halo Infinite has been inundated with frustrations and complaints following a poor launch to the game’s second season. Spartan, a pro player for eUnited who finished top four at the recent HCS Kansas City Major, was one of many to join the chorus of angry voices on social media. But his choice of words and remarks has led to him being slapped with a fine from the Halo Championship Series, who believed he broke the code of conduct on professional standards.
The season is off to a rocky start. Day one issues included weapons appearing to sporadically jam, challenges not tracking correctly, and battle pass items not unlocking for some players. On top of the unintended bugs, intended changes to slides and map geometry scored equal levels of scorn from the community since the changes removed popular skill jumps and nerfed elements of Halo Infinite’s “curb slide” tech.
Spartan’s initial comments on the season remained fairly professional. He opted to take the first few days of the new season off to play other things after seeing reactions to the launch. But once he had the opportunity to sit down with the update, he didn’t mince words.
“My gun keeps fucking jamming, the movement is wonky, I can’t turn speed lines off,” Spartan listed off in a tweet on May 4. “Not playing this garbage until there’s some sort of fix, this is borderline unplayable. Fucking pathetic.” Further tweets later into the night continued to put Halo developer 343 Industries on blast for the season’s poor launch, egged on by replies from more casual Halo fans accusing him of unnecessary toxicity and overstating the problems.
“My full time job is to play Halo,” he said in reply to one of these comments. “343 has made the game borderline unplayable so I can’t even do my job. Yeah I’m gonna be toxic fuck you.”
While the HCS code of conduct says that “the Administration will always value constructive criticism and feedback in relationship to the Program,” it emphasizes a strict policy that players must express that criticism in a professional manner and that “disparagement and harassment will not be tolerated.” It’s clear that the tournament organizers saw Spartan’s comments as crossing that line.
Despite the fine and the initial heat he took on social media for his comments, Spartan refused to apologize for his words and a stream following the debacle showed that his blunt honesty still resonated with many players. He thanked viewers for an unprecedented amount of subs and donations on Twitter following the stream’s conclusion, which he half-jokingly commented would be going toward paying his fines during the stream.
While frustrations persist, 343 has already made steps toward fixing the problems plaguing Infinite‘s season two launch. Compensation in the form of XP boosts and challenge swaps was handed out to all players following day one issues, and the developers have begun reviewing options when it comes to reverting changes made to the maps and to sliding. Dissatisfied pro players will probably be hoping fixes and rollbacks will make it to the game before tournaments begin to start again in a few months.
