Until Microsoft begins rolling out its recently announced PC version of Halo: The Master Chief Collection (MCC), the only way to play a relatively modern multiplayer Halo experience on PC is through ElDewrito, a fan-made modification of Halo Online, which was an official free-to-play spin-off that was canceled after a short closed beta.
Although the mod ran into some legal trouble with Microsoft last year that prompted a pause in development, it still remains playable with a fully functional server browser and active players, with over a million rounds played since the mod"s 0.6 release last year.
Today, after almost a year of silence, the mod makers put out a new blog post detailing the current situation around the mod and what involvement they have had with MCC"s development. This comes after Microsoft namedropped ElDewrito in a recent Reddit AMA saying it is "working closely" with the team for exploring official modding support post-launch.
Halo franchise director Frank O’ Conner and 343 Industries developers had first met with the ElDewrito team in April of 2018, who had arrived with the aforementioned request to pause the mod"s development.
During the meeting, the developers had revealed that ElDewrito"s success - boasting 12,000 concurrent players at the time - had given them "a kick in the pants." The modding team says this is what made Halo: The Master Chief Collection for PC move up in 343 industries roadmap:
MCC has obviously always been planned to eventually be on PC, but was never on the current roadmap. So while ElDewrito is not responsible for MCC coming to PC, it is responsible for it coming to PC right now.
Although the ElDewrito team wasn"t at liberty to reveal anything specific about MCC"s innards, it said that it has have been "acting as an advisory board" for the PC version but as its expertise is in modding, it hasn"t been involved in actual development. This may change once Halo: Reach is out of the gate, however, for implementing official modding and Forge support.
The blog signed off adding that the ElDewrito mod"s development is also still ongoing, and that an update is planned to release in the near future. We might even see the team move on to Halo: The Master Chief Collection for its future modding endeavors.