It didn’t take long for modders to start figuring out a way to get the Russia-only closed beta of Halo Online working elsewhere. In fact, excellent progress was being made to this end until Microsoft caught wind of it and rather hastily killed the project with a DMCA notice.
The mod was being hosted on free source code repository Github, but if you hit it up now, you’ll find a lovely DMCA takedown message instead. The actual notice is available for viewing on Github too, if you’re curious. It’s a fairly succinct affair.
I don’t think it’s much of a shock Microsoft took this course of action. Other companies are quick to protect their properties and Redmond is no exception.
As for a release outside of Russia? Here’s what 343 Industries has to say:
Q: Will gamers in other regions like North America and Europe be able to play Halo Online?
A: Right now our focus is on learning as much as we can from the closed beta period in Russia. Theoretically, any expansion outside of Russia would have to go through region-specific changes to address player expectations.
Github complies with Microsoft DMCA takedown of Halo Online mod repo [Ars Technica]
Comments
11 responses to “Microsoft Puts An End To Global Access Halo Online Mod”
Test it with a hacker country first, good work.
Testing a Free to Play game in a place where people don’t pay for games does actually make sense.
Microsoft or whoever is leading it are being really wierd. It’s almost like they don’t like PC gamers or something ;P
…”region-specific changes to address player expectations.”
Change “player” to “share-holder” and you’re on a winner. Cant really blame them though, I guess.
Did anyone here manage to play it before the mod was blocked?
Yeah, it was like an empty singleplayer game. All the systems worked (with the exception of the bubble shield), guns, vehicles and movement. The maps were also surprisingly detailed, I think some textures may have been redone and some haven’t. There were two key rebind slots for each action in the menu, a FOV slider, graphics options as well as 4 ability slots at the bottom of the screen, which don’t do anything as of yet, but I suspect were for the purchaseable skills and stuff. I do have some screenshots though. http://imgur.com/a/2zi4Y
So it was pretty unfinished?
Yeah, there was no death animation, you just instantly respawned back at one of the points, but in other words all it needs are other people or ai and it could be considered playable. Some people are also working on getting the multiplayer working to some success.
it’s rather easy to find the mod even with the github taken down.
And i would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!
On a serious note though, i was a little interested to see if it was any good, hopefully Microsoft ports the latter Halo games at some point because playing those online would be awesome for PC imo =)
Player expectations. Yes. Because normally you’d expect to have to pay for this as DLC, or a preorder bonus for the next Halo game. You wouldn’t expect less, because thats the way we’ve treated you for the last few years and you’ll keep coming back for more…
End to it? Hahahahaha Nope just moved http://www.reddit.com/r/HaloOnline