This past week, 343 Industries launched Halo Infinite‘s single-player campaign, its free-to-play multiplayer half having already been available since mid-November. The single-player campaign of Halo Infinite has been warmly received both critically and among Halo fans, revisiting aspects of the original Halo games while innovating in exciting ways. Yet Halo Infinite hasn’t launched without issues, including a particularly nasty glitch that’s deleting players’ save files.
While rarely occurring, Halo Infinite players who have come across the save file glitch are calling attention to the problem so that it doesn’t happen to anyone else. There’s luckily an easy way to avoid it, but it requires Halo Infinite players to be aware of what’s happening. The heart of the issue is that Halo Infinite is mistakenly prompting players to log into Xbox even though they’re still logged in. Doing this can corrupt the player’s save file, forcing them to restart Halo Infinite‘s campaign.
As for what prompts the second Xbox login, there are multiple causes. They all revolve around inputs, peripherals, or swapping between multiple platforms like an Xbox console or PC. More specific reported examples include reconnecting a controller or plugging in a second Xbox controller, using quick resume to start back into Halo Infinite after playing another game with multiple players on the same account, and similar issues.
What happens is that, after doing one of the above, players will be prompted in Halo Infinite to sign in once more. If players do sign in again and then start playing, the game will bug out and eventually stop working. If players try to reload the same save file, it will count down from three and then simply not load the save file. It will have become corrupted and inaccessible. There’s no known way to recover a corrupted Halo Infinite save file at this time.
The lesson Halo Infinite players should take away is to never accept a prompt to log in while playing Halo Infinite. If that prompt pops up, find a way to close it or the game. It’s better to lose some progress than to have an entire Halo Infinite save file corrupted.
The good news is that Halo Infinite players have already found ways to reproduce this error. So while 343 hasn’t officially acknowledged the problem, once it does it should be fast-tracked for being fixed. It could have to do with Halo Infinite being a co-op campaign, but co-op is currently disabled, or it could be a bigger problem with Xbox account management. Either way, Halo Infinite players should be wary until a fix has been confirmed.
Halo Infinite is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.