Halo: The Master Chief Collection (MCC) Steam Update – April 2023 – Halo Support

Updated: April 6, 2023

Steam Deck Support

Today’s update for Halo: The Master Chief Collection (MCC) upgrades the Steam Deck Compatibility from "Unsupported" to "Playable", enabling players on Steam Deck to access modes that require Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), such as multiplayer matchmaking and the Custom Game Browser. Future updates for MCC will continue to improve Steam Deck compatibility as well.

Stay tuned to the News section of HaloWaypoint.com and @HaloSupport on Twitter for the latest news on upcoming MCC updates.

If you encounter any issues while playing Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam Deck, capture a screenshot or video of the issue then submit a Flag Report ticket. Issues submitted via Flag Report will be shared with the MCC development team for further investigation. Halo Support Agents will be unable to provide troubleshooting for Steam Deck-related issues submitted in a Bug Report ticket.

This update only applies to Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam. No download is needed for MCC on Xbox consoles or the Xbox app for Windows PC. For more information on the latest update for all platforms, visit the December 2022 Patch Notes.

Known Issues

Alongside this update, the team has added multiple Steam Deck issues to our Known Issues list. The first issue below affects all players who are launching Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam Deck. Read the Developer Notes below for additional information on this issue.

When launching Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam Deck, selecting one of the available Anti-Cheat launch options will result in the game launching with the opposite launch option. For example, selecting “Anti-Cheat Disabled” will result in MCC launching with Anti-Cheat enabled.
- Until this issue is resolved in a future update, players on Steam Deck must select the “Anti-Cheat Disabled” launch option to access multiplayer matchmaking and the Custom Game Browser.

Developer Notes

As we've mentioned previously, we've been working with both Valve and EAC to enable anticheat-enabled gameplay on Steam Deck. During the course of this work, we reached a point where the launch behavior is as you see now, where the launch options behave opposite their descriptions. This emergent behavior occurred without any changes to the game executable itself. It's a result of differences in initialization on Windows vs. Linux. Things that are guaranteed to occur on Windows don't always occur on Linux, and things that can't happen on Windows can and sometimes do happen on Linux. Since the game was coded with only Windows in mind, the code does not explicitly account for any of the Linux behavior.

We can change the game initialization to behave the same way on both Windows and Linux, and indeed, we've already done so internally. However, these and other associated Steam Deck changes require more comprehensive test passes before they can be released. We know our players have been eager to play in matchmaking and participate in custom game browser games, so we chose to release this small update sooner in order to unlock these experiences. As we noted with this release, we expect to provide further improvements for Steam Deck compatibility in a future update.

Other Known Issues in this release include:

Shortly after being removed from or leaving a party with other players via the Roster menu, players on Steam Deck may experience Halo: The Master Chief Collection freezing or crashing.
Players on Steam Deck are unable to play Campaign Co-op or Spartan Ops with players on PC or Xbox consoles. Attempting to do so may result in players accessing gameplay, however, all sessions will eventually experience a “Connection Interrupted” error or a similar disconnection.
- Campaign Co-op and Spartan Ops will function as expected if all players in the group are playing on Steam Deck.
Before playing input-restricted matchmaking on Steam Deck, players may need to change their preferred input device in-game to Gamepad. To change this setting in-game, follow the steps below:
1. 1. Launch Halo: The Master Chief Collection.
  2. Select Options & Career from the main menu.
  3. Select Settings.
  4. Under the Control tab, switch Preferred Input Device to Gamepad.

For a full list of known issues in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, visit our Known Issues section.

Download Size

Steam: approximately 6 MB.

Steam Deck Support

Known Issues

Download Size

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