The announcement that 343 Industries would be introducing full support for modding toHalo: The Master Chief Collectionon PC came as a major surprise. It was confirmed suddenly just one week ago and then launched three days later. As exciting as the introduction of mod support and a Custom Game Browser toHalo: The Master Chief Collectionis, however, there was an unfortunate oversight in the hurry to get the update live. Official mod support has broken a significant number of previously availableHalomods.
As most PC gamers understand, the vast majority of game mods are made without any sort of official support from the developer. Modders simply take a game as it is and go to work. That was the case withHalo: The Master Chief Collectionwhen it first launched on PC. Over 800 mods are currently listed on NexusMods now. But implementing official support for mods requires some dramatic changes to files and structures, many of which earlier mods depended on not being changed.
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Looking through the NexusMods listings forHalo: The Master Chief Collectionnow results in many of the mods being flagged with “BROKEN” in their titles. Many of those not flagged are likely broken, too, but haven’t been updated to reflect the recent changes. It’s likely that some, and hopefully many, of theseHalomodswill be fixed in the weeks and months to come. But it’s possible some of them won’t be, either because of the difficulty involved with adapting to the new system or because they’re no longer supported.
343 hasn’t acknowledged the issue since it dropped themodding update on June 23. A bullet point in the update’s patch notes does mention that modders may have to “rebuild your maps to play properly,” which doesn’t quite seem to meet the severity of the situation.
To 343’s credit, the addition of theCustom Game Browseris going to make mods forHalo: The Master Chief Collectionaccessible in a way that’s difficult to capture. Modders who go the extra mile to make sure their mods work with the update will be rewarded. 343 clearly has its eye on that goal.
But it’s fair criticism to say that343 Industriescould have done much, much more to make this process smoother for theHalo: The Master Chief Collectionmodding community. These are some of the most dedicatedHalofans in the world and 343 put them in a very challenging position. It’ll be interesting to see if 343 reaches out to the modding community in the coming weeks.
Halo: The Master Chief Collectionis available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
