Halo 3 Xbox 360 Servers Have Gone Dark
Today is a sad day for Halo 3 and other classics of the beloved franchise. 343 Industries is sunsetting the original Xbox 360 online servers for a variety of Halo games to prioritize newer releases.
“On January 13, 2022, Xbox 360 game servers for Halo games were turned off—sunsetting the service,” the devs wrote. “This means that while these games can still be played, online services such as challenges and file share are no longer available.”
The original schedule of the sunsetting process was in December 2021. The devs then pushed the end date to January 2022. Thankfully for fans of the franchise, Halo 3 and the other beloved titles will still be playable online. After all, the devs have confirmed that the “games in Halo: The Master Chief Collection will not be impacted.”
“This only affects Xbox 360 versions of the game,” the devs continued. “The Halo titles available within MCC have been rebuilt and remastered to leverage different, modernized services.”
In the case of Halo 3, devs added new weapons, skins, and maps that were not part of the original game.
Many members of the gaming community shared their tributes for Halo 3 across different forms of social media. Multiple fans shared some heartfelt messages that told a short story of what Halo 3 meant to them.
“The original Halo 3 servers shut down today,” one fan wrote. “Godspeed.”
“So many amazing memories on that game,” wrote another. “Nothing will ever come close to the joys I had in that time, 2007-2012.”
The original matchmaking lobby for Halo 3 would show a heat map of the global location of the players trying to connect at a given time. Now, however, all lights have gone out and the player population is 0. The blacked out map indicates that no players were active, for the first time in the game’s history.
What memories do yo have with this game? Let us know in the comments below.