Xbox Halo Infinite players want to opt-out of crossplay to avoid cheaters on PC

(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

With depressing predictability, a free-to-play competitive game comes out and complaints of rampant cheating roll in. In the case of Halo Infinite, which opened its multiplayer beta on November 15, some of those complaints come from players on console asking for the option to disable crossplay to avoid the larger number of cheaters on PC. "Let me turn off cross-play until you guys can get an actual anti-cheat implemented" writes @jcb_response, posting two videos of a player using a wallhack and an aimbot.

Another video of the aimbotter: pic.twitter.com/txw0SFJ8GCNovember 26, 2021

Similar recordings have been posted to Reddit along with similar demands for the option to opt out of crossplay, and here's one of a player who, when asked if he was cheating "said he had a controller mod".

While it's possible to choose whether you get matched with players using controllers or mouse and keyboard while playing solo or as a duo in Halo Infinite's ranked arena mode, there's no such option in quickplay or the current Fracture: Tenrai event. And of course there's nothing stopping a player on PC from using cheats with a controller plugged-in.

While it's possible to install cheats on a console, it's significantly harder than it is on PC, where hacks like these proliferate. The Anti-Cheat Police Department Twitter account went looking for Halo Infinite cheat-sellers, and found "about 12" already offering them. "For just $8, you can ruin everyone's day." Once again, on behalf of PC gaming, sorry about all those cheaters in your console games.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.