Halo: The Master Chief Collection has had an extremely rocky launch. Bugs, glitches, and an almost completely broken matchmaking system have been frustrating players for the last few weeks. While the problems have been extremely annoying, most players have sat back and enjoyed what content did work while waiting patiently for fixes to trickle out of the very forthright 343 Industries. However, that openness has slowed down lately, as updates on the situation have become rarer as the days continue to pass. Halo franchise director Frank O’Connor took to gaming forum NeoGAF to explain and gave a very surprising response which was picked up by Reddit.
Well past a couple of dozen believable (I don’t personally believe them, but better safe than sorry) death threats.
Replying to someone who explained that they are still experiencing problems, but are enjoying the game when it works Frank, under his NeoGAF username Stinkles said “You are ‘lucky.’ Lots of people are having the same experience as you (which still isn’t good enough) – but many people aren’t having as good an experience. Something we hope to fix properly, soon. I am not posting much for a couple of reasons, one, too busy trying to fix. Two, well past a couple of dozen believable (I don’t personally believe them, but better safe than sorry) death threats. Apologies. We’ll keep communicating via Halo Waypoint.”
It seems to be an unfortunate truth of the internet that whenever someone does something to anger a group, they will inevitably receive death threats about it. It is disgusting of course, but especially so when you see the overall ramifications. While the problems with Halo: The Master Chief Collection have been annoying, one of the few bright spots was how well 343i and its developers were communicating with fans. Stuff like this ends up hurting everyone as it obviously puts fear into people who don’t deserve it, and it creates an atmosphere where developers are afraid to speak for fear of receiving these threats.