Kind of old news at this point, but in case you hadn’t caught up: Halo: Master Chief Collection gets online multiplayer support on Steam Deck. Per the description from the blog post:

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.

While the game previously worked with the campaign modes, yesterday’s update adds online multiplayer support. I would assume that by extension, online multiplayer also works on Linux desktop.

There are, however, a few “gotchas”:

  1. Launch options are reversed. For example, if you launch the game with “Anti-Cheat Disabled”, anti-cheat will actually be on.
  2. Players may experience “freezing or crashing” after being removed from or leaving a party with other players via the Roster menu.
  3. Campaign co-op and Spartan Ops are only available to other players who are also on Deck; these modes aren’t cross-compatible yet with PC/Xbox players.
  4. “Players may need to change their preferred input device in-game to Gamepad” before playing input-restricted matchmaking.

Great news for Halo fans. This update is only…a few years late to the party, but better late than never I suppose.

Cover image credit: 343 Industries/Xbox Game Studios