Halo Infinite’s Player Stats Problem Is About To Get Way Worse

Halo Infinite is more tight-lipped about data than any other modern Halo. Prior entries in the series of shooters allowed you to view your all-time multiplayer stats, including key figures like win-loss breakdown, kill-death ratio, and more. For data-minded players, this info wasn’t just fun to look at—it also served as an essential tool for charting your personal progress.

But Halo Infinite doesn’t offer an official way for players to check their long-time stats, save for a single-match rundown at the end of each match. If you want to see how well you’ve done in the long term, beyond tracking your progress in the game’s challenge-based battle pass, you won’t find such data anywhere in the game’s menus. You won’t find it on developer 343 Industries’ hub website for the series, Halo Waypoint, as you can for the company’s previous two games, Halo 5, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

This lines up with a recent trend in serialized first-person shooters, where basic data that was previously provided by developers in previous entries is absent in more recent ones. Last year’s Battlefield 2042 launched without a scoreboard—a key feature for the game—finally adding it this past spring, but only after cacophonous player feedback. In some cases, the data exists, but is locked behind a paywall. Take Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which will show you your kill-death ratio…for $20.

There is, at least, an unofficial workaround for Halo Infinite: a website called Halo Data Hive, which allows you to punch in your Xbox gamertag and see your all-time stats. It’s not just 101-level stuff like your kill-death ratio and total number of wins versus losses, basic info that 343 does provide. You can see how many kills you average per match. You can see how much damage you’ve doled out since the game’s late 2021 launch. You can check to-the-decimal figures about your accuracy. And you can even differentiate all of these data by seasons. (Halo Infinite, a free-to-play game, is based on a seasonal model, where new maps, modes, and cosmetics are added to the game every few months.) What’s more, Halo Data Hive also features scrupulously cobbled together data for players on teams affiliated with Halo Champsionship Series (HCS), if there are any fans of Halo Infinite’s pro circuit in the room.

In short, Halo Data Hive is an enormously valuable resource, an instance of a game’s community pinch-hitting a key role that is usually fulfilled by that game’s developer.

It’s also in danger.

The lion’s share of public Halo Infinite data is courtesy of a fan-run project called HaloDotAPI. (For those who don’t know, API stands for “Application Programming Interface” and allows for the easy exchange of data from one party to another. IBM, credit where it’s due, has a comprehensive rundown for those interested.) Founded a year ago by Alexis “Zeny” Bize, HaloDotAPI was formally acquired by Autocode, an SF-based tech company that focuses on API, a few months after 343 Industries ran a trio of “technical flights”—basically, beta tests—for Halo Infinite’s multiplayer mode.

“We’re the only Halo Infinite API on the market, a ton of services rely on us, 343 won’t release a public API [in the] short term, and we may say goodbye to the community,” Bize told Kotaku.

HaloDotAPI serves as the spine for a slew of community-run data collation efforts in the Halo Infinite community. There’s the aforementioned Halo Data Hive, yes, but it’s also used Leaf and Spartan Record, two other multiplayer stat-tracking sites; Halo Medals, a database that shows you how many medals, or in-game accolades for impressive feats, you’ve earned in Halo Infinite; and True Achievements, the popular achievement-tracking site.

“[It’s] an elegant tool powering over two dozen community apps and websites, which are in turn used by thousands of players every day,” a representative for HaloHub, a news and content organization that serves as sort of a town square for the Halo community, told Kotaku.

Running an API for all of this stuff is expensive. (Bize spent $2,500 of his own money getting it off the ground; that cost was offset, but not by much, by about $300 in Patreon funding.) Last month, Autocode founder CEO Keith Horwood wrote in a blog post that HaloDotAPI is no longer financially sustainable and would shut down at the end of July, effectively ending any services that rely on its data.

“There are two categories of costs to consider when running any sort of web service,” Horwood told Kotaku. “The one most people are familiar with is the cost of infrastructure: How much does it cost to run the darn thing? Something that folks who aren’t in tech miss is the cost of operations: We have to pay to feed the people who work on these tools! So it’s a combination of infrastructure and salaries.”

The folks behind HaloDotAPI say that 343 Industries or its owner, Microsoft, could step in and save the project. To date, both companies have declined to take any action. What’s more, 343 hasn’t detailed any tangible plans about releasing a proprietary internal API.

This is already having a chilling effect on the services that make use of it. Most of the multiplayer stats sites appear to be busted. Halo Data Hive, whose representatives did not respond to Kotaku’s request for comment, now has this statement plastered on its site, emphasis Kotaku’s:

Notice: Halo Data Hive is currently no longer tracking HCS scrims, tournaments etc until I finish updating the code to reduce the number of calls to Halo Dot API to hopefully fall into a lower priced subscription. During this time you will also no longer be able to search your own service record. Sorry for the inconvenience. You can read up more about it here The Future of HaloDotAPI #SaveHaloDotAPI. Halo Data Hive currently makes 4,100 calls to the API per hour which costs $450 per month. My aim [is] to reduce this to the $95 subscription.

Bize says he’s been in contact with 343 Industries since December. When it became clear that HaloDotAPI couldn’t continue without assistance, the developer passed the buck to Microsoft, citing issues with data privacy and legal compliance. But Horwood, in that blog post, noted that Autocode has been in contact with Microsoft, who said their compliance departments wouldn’t stand in 343’s way. My read is that the folks behind HaloDotAPI care less about stewarding this data than ensuring players can have access to it, whoever’s behind the project. Ball’s back in 343’s court.

“Microsoft sees the value in @halodotapi and have agreed to assist with legal compliance,” HaloHub said in a tweet. “But, as it stands, 343i won’t step up to fund the very reasonable cost of the project. If 343i are serious about reviving #HaloInfinite then this is a terrible business decision.”

Halo esports lead Tahir “Tashi” Hasandjekic addressed the impending closure of HaloDotAPI in an interview with the Twitch streamer LouisVTitan. Tashi acknowledged that an API exists for both Halo 5 and Halo Wars 2, and noted how important it is to the playerbase. “For the esports side, we truly believe in all of that,” he said

“Long term, our own API is the solution here,” he went on. “We understand the importance. We definitely feel for the community and the developers, if this goes away. But that’s just the reality of the situation.”

If you’re familiar with the production of Halo Infinite and would like to chat, on or off the record, my inbox is always open: anotis@kotaku.com (Signal and Proton upon request).

Tashi did not provide a timeline for when 343 might roll such a thing out. Representatives for 343 Industries did not respond to a request for comment.

Right now, HaloDotAPI has a few weeks left before it goes dark. Fans have spent the past month rallying on Twitter around the #SaveHaloDotAPI hashtag. There’s an ongoing fundraiser for the project, too, but it’s not looking so hot. Autocode needs about $10,000 a month to keep HaloDotAPI going indefinitely; right now, they’re at $601. (In the event of an imminent shutdown, Horwood told Kotaku any contributions will be refunded to donors.) Without intervention of some sort, there’s a good chance this data goes offline.

“I really hope there’s a decision maker at 343 willing to engage with us because we’d love to see a positive outcome here,” Horwood said. “The community would too.”