Charity Cancels Halo Tournament Because They Couldn’t Get Custom Games To Work

Every year for the last eight years, Gamers For Giving charity has hosted a Halo tournament in the United States’ Midwest. It’s a tournament that runs as part of a wider LAN party designed to raise funds for Gamers Outreach, which uses video games and equipment to provide threapy and some downtime for hospitalised children.

But this year the charity LAN won’t have a Halo component, and that’s all thanks to Halo 5: Guardians.

In an announcement on the Gamers for Giving website, the organisers said that the scheduled Halo tournament was being cancelled due to “encountering an unrecognisable error in the custom games matchmaking platform”. The tournament was scheduled to run over two days with a US$3000 prize pool.

“After spending multiple hours testing various network configurations, swapping switches, interacting directly with 343 Industries, and even considering a venue swap –- it has simply not been possible to initiate custom game sessions in a reliable tournament environment,” the organisers wrote. They added that the issue did not arise with their test consoles.

In an age of always-online games, these are the kinds of problems that can arise. Gamers are all too familiar with server issues on launch day. Those playing the first episode of Hitman have found themselves locked out of content if their internet connection drops out.

But for an organisation that says they have “always looked forward to including Halo as part of Gamers for Giving”, it’s a bitter pill to swallow. That’s the reality of modern video games, though. LAN support simply isn’t an option or a priority for many developers, regardless of the platform.


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