343 Industries is cracking down on players using exploits in Halo: Reach

Halo developer 343 Industries has officially taken action against Halo: Reach players who have been making use of an exploit to artificially boost their experience gains. Using rubber bands or other objects, many players rigged their controllers to spin them around endlessly in matchmaking games, particularly Grifball; this allowed them to dodge the AFK protection systems in-game and gain experience for completing matches that they didn’t play, ruining the gameplay experience for many people who just wanted to play normal matches.

We are aware of players negatively impacting the experience for others by attempting to artificially advance through the progression system in MCC. We have investigated these reports, taken action on known offenders, and will follow-up with additional action as needed.

— Halo Support (@HaloSupport) December 17, 2019

Based on multiple responses to the official notification of the ban by 343 Industries’ support account on Twitter, it looks like players who were punished have recieved up to one month bans for their exploiting. It’s likely that continuing to AFK farm after a ban will cause a more severe punishment to occur, although there hasn’t been word about what that would be at this time. Players who think they were falsely banned can submit a ticket to the official Halo support site.

Personally, I’m glad that 343 Industries has taken relatively swift action here, although I do think that a one month ban for a first offense is a bit on the harsh side. Then again, there’s no way that anyone can participate in AFK farming and not know that what they’re doing is ruining the game for other people, so I digress.

Halo: Reach is available now for $10 on PC through both Steam and the Windows 10 Store, as well as on Xbox One as an add-on to the Master Chief Collection for the same price.