Halo Infinite isn’t in the Top 10 of most-played Steam games. In fact, at a little more than six months old – and its fan-favourite multiplayer component entirely free-to-play and available on Steam – Halo Infinite doesn’t even breach the top 50 games that boast the highest concurrent player numbers. Or the top 100.
Halo InfinitePublisher: MicrosoftDeveloper: 343 IndustriesPlatform: Xbox One, Xbox X/S, PCLaunched: 2021Monetisation: Multiplayer segment is free-to-play but includes a battle pass system and cosmetic microtransactions. The singleplayer, open-world campaign is not F2P but is included in Xbox Game Pass.
At the time of writing, Halo Infinite ranks as the 286th “top game” according to Steam Charts. It bounces up and down around the chart, of course – the highest I saw it hit yesterday was 255th, I think? – but in the last 30 days, its peak concurrent PC count hasn’t even breached 8000 players, even though, at its height last November, it boasted over a quarter of a million. According to the same tracker site, Infinite’s lacklustre peak concurrent count is down 50 percent compared to last month alone. And that’s a problem.
Before you start drafting your angry retort in the comments: yes, I know, concurrent player counts are far from the only metric we can use to measure a game’s success, especially when that game has for many, many years been a console exclusive. It is, however, perhaps a symptom of Halo Infinite’s chronic malaise and indicative of an unhappy player base.
You don’t have to know much about Halo or even like it to appreciate its legacy as one of the world’s most influential games. It’s long been at the forefront of FPS innovation, and birthed many of the user experience improvements modern shooters take for granted, including matchmaking and playlists. And while there’s a stubborn segment of the population that refuses to believe that a murder simulator shooter like Halo could offer much in terms of storytelling, few can deny the franchise has peerlessly fused meaty gunplay with compelling characters and a detailed world that we care about.