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Nonstop Whining, Toxicity, and Even Death Threats Earn Halo Subreddit a Temporary Lockdown

You’re all a bunch of massive, unbearable babies, y’know that?

Following a recent barrage of toxicity that has reached levels previously thought impossible, the Halo subreddit has been temporarily locked down. This comes after multiple arguments on the subreddit spiraling out of control, and even getting to the point of users doxxing one another and issuing death threats.

Full statement from one of /r/Halo’s mods regarding the subreddit right here:

All of this comes a day after 343 Industries’ Community Director, Brian Jarrard, issued a lengthy response to the entitled, insufferable, inconsolable crybabies on the Halo subreddit – which addresses many of the most common complaints about Halo Infinite point-by-point.

No developer should even have to stoop to the level of the serial complainers on Reddit, but God bless Ske7ch for doing it anyway. In his lengthy message to the Halo Reddit community (which, I’d like to point out, does not represent even a fraction of the folks who actually care about the franchise and have better things to do in life than to complain about every single pixel of the game), Jarrard doesn’t hesitate to put his foot down and address the toxicity that has come 343’s way thus far via the platform.

Ske7ch says he monitors the Reddit to communicate with fans and occasionally “take it on the chin”, but to be honest – enough is enough. We know the battle pass wasn’t ideal from day one, and changes have been made already. The game was released for free and weeks ahead of schedule just days before a holiday. Halo’s esports following, competition, and community have never been in a better place. New fans are getting to experience the game for the very first time because of this new model. But instead of having even a modicum of perspective, the dredges of the Halo subreddit (I’m not even going to say “Halo community”, because this isn’t representative of what the actual Halo community is) have repeatedly spent the last couple of weeks filling their diapers, threatening 343 and one another, and screaming into the internet void about a game that – to them – is clearly the end of the fucking world.

In my opinion, Halo Infinite plays better than any title in the series since Reach. I’ve had more fun with this game in my 40+ hours with it so far than I have with Halo 4 and 5 put together. 343 has delivered us one of the best FPS experiences in recent memory – and it’s all for free and – once again – weeks ahead of schedule.

Unfortunately, the Halo subreddit is reinforcing all those bullshit arguments and hot takes you see from major news outlets about gamers being awful, toxic, basement dwelling trolls. I certainly do not know how 343 has filtered through all the noise to continue fine tuning the game over the last few weeks (through a major holiday and a fucking pandemic, mind you), but I truly appreciate the work they’ve done – and will continue to do – to make this the best Halo yet.

I like to think I’ve got pretty thick skin, but I sure has hell don’t have skin thick enough to be a game developer in 2021. Thanks for everything, 343. Can’t wait to get my hands on the full package this coming week.

Halo Infinite drops on PC and Xbox on December 8, 2021.

Papa Dom

Co-founder, lead blogger, graphic designer, and manager of WGG's writing team - Dom has been writing about video games for over ten years. Dom's work has been featured on some of the world's biggest gaming news outlets - including Dexerto, GameInformer, and IGN.

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