Sending waves through the Halo Championship Series (HCS) this week, the Kansas City Pioneers announced that they will be leaving the HCS scene citing a lack of clear direction to league partnership as a major reason behind their decision. With this move, the Halo esports scene not only loses a team that has placed near the top 5 in every major event this season, but also an organization that was helping push the scene forward on-and-off the server.
After launching to high-praise out of its initial beta-testing, the latest installment in the popular Halo franchise, Halo Infinite saw a significant drop in player population in the months to follow, as the development team at 343 Industries struggled to meet modern-day live-service expectations. Nearly nine months later, this continues to be an on-going issue for the game causing frustrations amongst both the general Halo population and the competitive esports side. From server desync to a slow-loading UI to lack of new content (maps, weapons, etc), the team at 343i continues to struggle to find a strong cadence of fixes and content releases.
With the general feeling around Halo Infinite wavering, organizations involved in the esports scene have begun to question if the scene is worth continuing to field a roster and invest in. KC Pioneers, the latest team to depart, was one of the strongest advocates for growing the scene, not only fielding a strong competitive roster, but also forging new, ground-breaking partnerships. Ahead of April’s HCS Kansas City Major, the KC Pioneers organized a bootcamp with the MLB’s Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium, allowing a number of high-ranking HCS teams to come together and scrim each other ahead of the event in a cool and unique way. Having an organization like KCP who is willing to go above-and-beyond for the scene is a huge benefit to a healthy esports ecosystem and seeing them leave makes it that much more painful for fans of competitive Halo.
We’ve seen strong revivals in gaming and esports before with games like Apex Legends, No Man’s Sky, and Sea of Thieves seeing significant drop-offs in player population before finding strong content release cadences and bringing life back to their communities. Can 343i, Halo, and the HCS scene have a similar turn around? Only time will tell, but these next six months will be key, especially with popular FPS franchise Call of Duty getting set to release Modern Warfare 2 in October.
Find KCP’s full HCS departure announcement video here.
Image from: David Doran
