It's been a very exciting week for Halo fans. Not only has Halo Infinite's single-player campaign now launched, but 343 Industries confirmed Saturday that the Slayer playlist would be returning with game's next update. Obviously, 343 still has plenty of work to do, with reworks of Halo Infinite's monetization and battle pass systems being worked on. However, there's a more immediate concern Halo fans are trying to draw attention to, as Big Team Battle's matchmaking appears to be having issues.
Posted early Saturday morning, a Redditor named Macinzon asked other Halo players to help give a serious issue with Halo Infinite visibility. The issue is that Big Team Battle matchmaking is apparently having problems. When Halo Infinite players try to queue into Big Team Battle, they'll frequently, if not almost always, be met with a message reading "Connection Lost" that results in matchmaking failing to complete.
Macinzon says that this doesn't happen always. At some times of the day, it's even rare. However, during the busiest moments of the day, at least according to Macinzon, players can receive this error nine times out of ten if they try to queue into Big Team Battle. Alternatively, if Halo Infinite players don't get the error, they can instead encounter an infinite loading screen trying to load into a Big Team Battle match. This can even persist if players try to restart Halo Infinite's matchmaking later.
BTB matchmaking has been broken for two days but no visibility due to all the campaign posts from halo
Following the thread going viral on Reddit, the official Halo Support Twitter account issued a message confirming that 343 is investigating the problem. The account describes "errors" in matchmaking with a focus on Big Team Battle matches. While the team is investigating, there's no current update with regards to progress on the issue, let alone a fix being ready. It may be some time yet before 343 is able to resolve the problem.
Some Halo Infinite players, going as far back as the multiplayer half of the game's launch, will recognize this as a familiar problem. Even on launch day, some players were having problems with matchmaking errors or infinite loading screens. The problem never gained much traction, however, as players were still able to eventually queue into a match.
It's a good reminder that as exciting as it is to have a popular Halo game available once more, it is a newly released live service game going through significant changes. It's inevitable that such a popular game will have some server and technical issues, and Halo Infinite isn't impervious to that. What ultimately matters is that 343 responds to issues quickly and transparently, to build trust with players for when problems inevitably arise again in later updates and expansions.
Halo Infinite is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.