Maybe it’s because Certain Affinity is supposedly helping them develop a new game mode…

Last week, all the significant tech companies (Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon), including Microsoft, laid off several people (10,000) due to the current economic conditions. As 343 Industries is part of Xbox Game Studios, they are also part of Microsoft and are therefore involved in the redundancies. The head of the studio, Pierre Hintze, had to take up the keyboard and tried to calm the situation with a statement on Twitter…

“Halo and Master Chief are here to stay. 343 Industries will continue to develop Halo now and in the future, including epic stories, multiplayer, and more of what makes Halo great,” wrote Hintze, who seemed to be responding to tweets from a French Halo influencer, Bathrobe Spartan. He had previously leaked plans for a battle royale mode for Halo Infinite. According to him, 343 Industries has been thoroughly reorganized because of its role in the franchise. He pointed out that the studio had lost a third (!) of its employees, including contract workers; Halo Infinite was not hitting its sales targets; and 343 would be taking on a sort of coordinator role in the future and would not be actively developing Halo games…

He also wrote that the planned single-player Halo Infinite DLCs were also canceled, which had to do with the departure of creative director Joseph Staten. It was partially refuted by Jez Corden, writing for Windows Central, who could have asked a kind of rhetorical question: how could 343 Industries cancel something that wasn’t planned? At the time the cuts were announced, an ex-developer and an ex-contractor (Patric Wren and Nicholas Bird) criticized 343 management for the direction it was taking with Halo Infinite and the treatment of contract workers (who were limited by Microsoft to 18 months and were required to take a six-month break between contracts).

Master Chief’s armor doesn’t shine brightly.

Source: PCGamer