In the wake of some unsavory characters popping up in the Halo Infinite chat during the game’s second tech preview, 343 has taken to social media to forcefully express it’s zero-tolerance policy toward racism. Halo Infinite offers a text chat on both console and PC in addition to the usual in-game voice chat.
On September 25, Halo community director Brian Jarrard tweeted out a PSA to the Halo community, “If you spew racist comments in chat you’re getting banned. Preview or retail, doesn’t matter – we don’t want this in our game or community.” Jarrard notes that the chat filter is effectively blocking most racist comments, but some are unfortunately making it through.
As for reporting racists in voice chat, Jarrard mentions in a subsequent reply, “Please do use the Xbox tools to report these incidents. We all have room to keep improving in this area and expanding our capabilities.” Twitter user Franku also posted a series of screenshots detailing how to mute people in voice chat. This includes opening the Menu, navigating to Social, and selecting each individual you wish to mute.
Toxic chat and voice communications are all too common in multiplayer environments, especially popular competitive shooters like Halo. While 343 continues to improve its filters and systems on the backend, players should be mindful of the possibility of encountering racist communications in Halo Infinite and take appropriate actions to report any racist comments.
