Halo ElDewrito modders gave Microsoft 'a kick in the pants' over Master Chief Collection

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Mod team claim they helped the collection come to PC sooner than planned.

The creators of ElDewrito, the Halo Online mod that was blocked last year, have claimed they hastened Microsoft's decision to bring Halo: The Master Chief Collection to PC.

In a blog post this week one of the mod team, posting as RabidSquabbit, detailed conversations they had with Halo developer 343 Industries immediately following Microsoft's DMCA takedowns. "After the success of our 0.6 release, where we had 12,000 concurrent players, they were professional, impressed, congratulatory, and even sympathetic and apologetic about the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Microsoft issuing DMCA takedowns against Halo Online and Twitch Streamers," RabidSquabbit said.

They claim the success also prompted 343 Industries to bring forward their plans for The Master Chief Collection on PC. The collection has "always been planned to be eventually on PC", but the ElDewrito team is the reason it is happening "right now", RabidSquabbit said. "They mentioned to us that our success with ElDewrito lit a spark and we were told it 'gave us a kick in the pants'."

The mod team has been acting as an "advisory board" to 343 ahead of the collection's release, and will help 343 explore options for official mod support.

Finally, RabidSquabbit said that the ElDewrito mod "is not dead"—people are still playing it—and the team "is not going anywhere...you’ll be seeing a hell of a lot more from us in the future, whether it be in the existing ElDewrito mod, or MCC PC itself," they said. 

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.