F2P Russia exclusive Halo Online is canceled

Do you remember when in March 2015 we ‘WTF-ed' at the prospect of a Russia-exclusive free-to-play Halo game? That game was Halo Online and it was under development at the studios of Saber Interactive, developers of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, as well as other less known first-person shooters. We and many Halo fans didn't hide their outrage for this exclusivity and Halo Online mods soon began to flourish, especially to make the game playable globally and unlocking some of the features which were probably hidden behind the cash shop.

After several months of silence, it looks like Halo Online is no more, at least in its original shape. This official announcement at VK tells the story, which pretty much goes like this: Microsoft didn't want to continue the project. See for yourself, with the occasional translation error from Russian to English:

“Friends!

We told you that the break is temporary and soon the game starts again. Like you, we are waiting for news from Halo Online developers and hoping for an early announcement. But over the past six months, our colleagues from Microsoft and failed to take decisions on the future of the project. Now we know only one thing – the current form of the game will not be released.

In order not to deceive your hopes and expectations of new users, we close the Halo Online page on Fogeyme and freeze group in VK. This decision was not easy for us, but we understand that there is nothing worse than uncertainty.

If suddenly you do not have time to get compensation money spent on set pervoispytatelya – until August 30, you can easily do it online.

Work on the project to the Halo universe has been a real challenge, which we could not accept without you – Spartans from Halo Online. Thank you for your loyalty, honesty and dedication. John-117 would be proud of us! See you in other worlds Fogeyma.

Halo Online Team”

This makes us wonder about the real value of opening a game to a single region and deciding of its potential based solely on that feedback. But of course, the game could just be bad and quite far from what a Halo experience should be.