Halo Infinite is currently being hit by egregious amounts of cheating due to its lack of robust anti-cheat efforts. Cheaters may eventually be caught and banned, but Halo Infinite players are left matchmaking with these players until then. Cheaters even feel so confident in getting away with it in Halo Infinite that they've stepped up their transgressions. They're now also trying to harm Twitch streamers in the process by impersonating them while cheating.
Twitch streamer Mint Blitz, an Australian Halo content creator, recently called attention to this new trick being done by cheaters. In a post shared on Twitter, Mint Blitz shared a thread on Reddit titled, "Caught Mint Blitz (supposedly) using CHEATS in SWAT 41-1." The thread alleged that the Twitch streamer was cheating in their game, to which Mint Blitz says that the cheater was obviously impersonating them. They even go so far as showing that they've never played SWAT in Halo Infinite just to shut down trolls.
There is, of course, no specific gain for a cheater who impersonates a Twitch streamer or content creator. It's possible that it could obfuscate their cheating, redirecting the attention of 343 Industries to a different account. More likely, however, it's just another example of cheaters' priority being attention-seeking rather than any real effort to win without being caught. It has the opportunity of causing a stir, but is still likely to result in the cheater's eventual ban.
What makes the situation so frustrating is that there isn't even a traditional way to report cheaters in Halo Infinite. Instead, players have to go to the Halo Waypoint website and submit a video showing someone they recorded cheating. 343 is reliant on typed-out accusations and usernames seen in game footage to judge who needs to be punished. With that in mind, it's easy to see how impersonating another player could lead to the wrong person being punished.
The solution to the problem is for 343 to introduce better, or any at all, anti-cheat efforts. If players could report cheaters in-game, usernames would be irrelevant. If Halo Infinite had more substantial anti-cheat, then cheaters wouldn't be as big of an issue in the first place. For the time being, Halo Infinite players and content creators will just have to deal with the situation.
343 does plan to add more robust anti-cheat for Halo Infinite in the future. A tentative schedule for this anti-cheat update's release has not been provided, nor has the scale of these anti-cheat efforts. Halo Infinite players would likely prefer a Kernel-level driver like Valorant, Call of Duty: Warzone, and other shooters have, but they'll probably take anything at this point.
Halo Infinite is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.