Halo Infinite Steam Player Count Doubles Following Season 5 Launch

ign.com:

Halo Infinite is enjoying a modest resurgence following the release of Season 5: Reckoning.

Developer 343 Industries' first-person shooter had hovered around the 7,000 concurrent player mark on Valve’s platform in the run-up to this week’s launch of the Flood-fuelled Season 5. According to SteamDB, Halo Infinite then spiked on October 18, with 18,000 concurrents. That’s the game’s highest peak since the launch of Season 2 some 17 months ago, and enough players for Halo Infinite to crack Steam’s top 50 most-played games based on concurrents.

It’s worth remembering that the only concrete player data we have comes from Steam. Microsoft does not publish official Halo Infinite stats across platforms. But we do know Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is in the top 50 most-popular Xbox games right now, as confirmed by the Microsoft Store. Meanwhile, Halo Infinite has re-entered Steam’s top 100 selling games by revenue in 24th place, which suggests people are spending money on the new battle pass inside the free-to-download multiplayer FPS.

It’s a modest bump that may grow further as the weekend nears, but Halo Infinite is still well off its all-time peak on Steam of 272,586 concurrent players, set nearly two years ago when the game first came out.

Halo Infinite dropped off hard following launch as disgruntled players ditched the game for its poor progression systems, monetisation, and missing modes. 343 also made a number of controversial decisions, including scrapping split-screen multiplayer. Forge mode itself only arrived a year after launch, alongside online campaign co-op. 343 appears to have left Halo Infinite’s campaign behind, too. In June, 343 announced it had scrapped Halo Infinite’s story-driven seasonal cutscenes, news that