Halo Infinite devs plan to roll out a fix for Big Team Battle matchmaking next week
343 is giving Halo players 5 XP Boosts and 5 Challenge Swaps as consolation for the ongoing issues.
Halo Infinite's Big Team Battle multiplayer hasn't been completely unplayable for the last month, but it's definitely had problems: larger matchmaking parties often have difficulty getting into games, and disconnects were commonplace even when you could catch a match. After trying to solve Big Team Battle's issues over the holiday break, 343 now has an hotfix going through certification.
"As long as no issues arise, we are targeting releasing this hot fix middle of next week," wrote Halo community director Brian Jarrard on Friday.
As an apology for the BTB woes, 343 is also giving all players who log in 5 XP Boosts and 5 Challenge swaps when the hotfix goes live. Jarrard said that the freebies would be available for "about a month," so there's no rush to log in and grab them.
"We continue to work towards the mid-February patch and will share details as we get closer," Jarrard continued. "Additionally, work continues on plans/updates to other key topics we know are top of mind for the community (economy, armor customization, ranked, cheating, networking, etc.)."
It's good news for Big Team Battle players, but as Nat noted this week, what's available in Halo Infinite right now does feel stretched thin, and that seems likely to continue until the arrival of its second season in May, if not longer—the Forge mapmaking mode isn't expected to arrive until season 3, even later in 2022.
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Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.
When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).