Don't expect Halo Infinite campaign co-op until May 2022 at the earliest

Halo Infinite campaign co-op won't be released until May 2022 at the earliest - half a year after the game launches.

Speaking to Eurogamer in a new interview, Joseph Staten, Head of Creative at 343 Industries, said the recent extension of Halo Infinite Season 1 to May 2022 means the releases of campaign co-op and Forge mode have also been pushed back from their initial announced target launch windows.

Season 1 kicked off this week after 343 released Halo Infinite's multiplayer well ahead of the game's official 8th December street date. This means the full Season 1 battle pass is now online.

343 had intended to release a new season every three months, but the Season 1 battle pass flags that Season 1 ends in May 2022.

As already announced, Halo Infinite won't have campaign co-op or Forge at launch.

343 had said campaign co-op would hit the shooter during Season 2 at the earliest, which players had understood to mean about three months after launch.

User creation tool Forge, meanwhile, wasn't supposed to hit Halo Infinite until Season 3 at the earliest - or what would have been about six months after launch.

Staten told Eurogamer that 343 is still targeting campaign co-op for Season 2, but given Season 2 won't go live until May at the earliest, campaign co-op won't go live until then either.

And it's a similar situation for Forge mode, which may not launch until late summer next year at the earliest.

"At the time that we talked about campaign co-op and Forge I said our goal is to ship campaign co-op in Season 2 and our goal is to ship Forge with Season 3," Staten said.

"Yes, we are extending Season 1. So our goal still remains what I said before, which is to ship campaign co-op with Season 2 and Forge with Season 3. But those remain goals. Those remain targets. And we can't commit to any hard dates right now, because as we're seeing with this multiplayer beta, other things might move up in the priority stack for us.

"If it turns out that our progression system just isn't working the way that we intended, if we need to move some of these bigger rocks sooner, then we as a team will make those decisions and will clearly communicate to our fans why we're why we're doing certain things."

While it may be some time before Halo Infinite sees campaign co-op and Forge mode, Staten committed to their release.

"It's going to be a constant challenge to address some of those bigger rocks that I know players have completely legitimate feedback about," Staten said. "But we've got a couple big things that we still have to deliver to fans: campaign co-op and our Forge toolset are really big promises that we've made that we need to make good on."

Be sure to check out Eurogamer's Halo Infinite campaign hands-on preview to get a sense of what it's like.