Hero in 117 Minutes: The Largest XP Exploit in Halo Infinite

How some of the top community map and mode creators got banned from Halo Infinite for a map exploit.

The maximum career rank in Halo Infinite called "Hero" requires the player to reach a total of 9,319,350 XP in multiplayer matches. On average it takes a casual player 9558 matches to reach this rank—averaging 975 XP a game (skilled players can usually get more per game, such at 5,000 XP per BTB game). Now imagine getting all that XP and more in just one match... that's the scale of what was possible with this exploit, which eventually landed bans for the 14 players who exploited it, in length ranging from one month to permanent.

• Skip to the list of banned players

The players who were affected were mostly community creators who have contributed majorly to the live-service content of the game in the form of maps and modes, for free. One of the creators was even a contract worker for Halo Studios.

The shared motive between most of the players who participated in the exploit was to get Hero rank, as creating maps and modes using the game's level editor "Forge" (referred to as "forging") nets the creators 0 XP. Even getting content into matchmaking is not a feat worthy of XP for the forgers who keep the game alive—they merely get a share of store credits split between the collaborators of the content that got into matchmaking, and some cosmetics. Though even the granting of said credits and cosmetics in a timely manner has not been up to expectations.

Origins of the exploit

On Oct 20th, 2024, I was playing the community-made Survive The Undead (STU) mode by The Forge Falcons in Halo Infinite which had landed in matchmaking starting Oct 8th, 2024 for the second time around in a standalone playlist. The mode was previously in a "Community Workshop" playlist between May 21st, 2024 and Jun 4th, 2024, but I hadn't played much of it the first time around as I was wrapped up in multiple Forge projects at the time.

This time having taken a real look at the mode, I realized that it was quickly becoming the most fun experience I had played in Halo Infinite matchmaking at the time, and I was so invested in it that I had started writing a strategy guide on how to play it efficiently and get to high rounds. During a match on the map "Night of The Undead", my plans for refining my strategy got diverted as I spotted a player who had somehow gotten outside the map—something that shouldn't be possible.

Bypassing a One-Way Blocker

After some questioning, I got the player "Ukkz98" to show me how they were able to get outside the map. They exploited a misplaced One-Way Blocker in one of the windows in the starting room of the map where the enemy AI usually come out of. This One-Way Blocker had been placed too close to the wall, just enough to let the player's collision enter the blocker from the side of it, which did not block the player from moving through it entirely once they traversed to the window hole while hugging the wall.

This is the first time a bug like this related to the One-Way Blockers had been recognized in the Halo Infinite Forge community, so no wonder that it wasn't something the forgers had noticed and fixed when initially making the map.

We proceeded to explore outside the map—completely ignoring the objective of killing the AI—and found some interesting things. The first thing I saw was a set of floating weapons that we could pick up. These were later clarified by the mode scripter, MaxBloodBath to be a pool of weapons that the Mystery Box would choose from, but later made obsolete and just left outside the map.

Floating platform

At first, I thought that it just allowed us to gain access to some overpowered weapons that we could use to kill the AI faster, but after exploring the map a bit more, I found a mysterious floating platform. I was able to get a glimpse at what was on the platform by standing on the hills surrounding it, which revealed it was a platform used to store the powerups that would randomly drop from killed AI such as a score multiplier and Nuke.

I tried getting on top of it solo, and by launching the randoms with the Gravity Hammer, but never got a high enough jump. Rest assured, getting on that platform became my main source of interest.

After the game ended, I loaded the map in Forge and started theory crafting how to get on the platform. I tried to do the highest jump possible solo with a Gravity Hammer jump and a Repulsor, but it was just too short of the platform, so I came to the conclusion that it required at least two players.

Exploiting the bug with TFF

I had been talking with EliteFalcon the day before about wanting to play with some members of The Forge Falcons (TFF)—the creators of the mode—as I had learned to efficiently play the mode from writing the strategy guide and had not played with other like-minded players yet. The creators of the mode would surely know how to play it well.

After I had discovered the bug from the random player at 14:23 UTC on Oct 20th, I was in EliteFalcon's DMs at 15:41 UTC asking if TFF wanted to play STU; right after I had theory crafted the possible exploit. As it was a Sunday and some people from TFF were available, we agreed to jump into some games to try and go for high scores.

TFF was not aware of the window bug at the time, and I forget if I revealed the exploit to them immediately, but at least when we got Night of The Undead as the first match we happened to load into, I let them know about the bug on their map. We had a 4th random player in our match who quit at the very beginning of the match, leaving us free to do whatever we wanted without causing harm to anyone else, nor letting anyone else know. Quickly, the motive of wanting to go for a legit high score in a match turned into "how can we abuse this newfound exploit as much as possible".

I guided the group on how to do the window bug and showed the set of weapons outside the map. In no time, me and EliteFalcon did a Gravity Hammer + Repulsor jump on to the platform where we could start to explore what was possible with access to a lifetime supply of powerups. All of us were abundantly aware of how these powerups worked, so it didn't take long for us to realize how they could be exploited to their maximum. On the platform was also a Scorpion Tail—which is a very rare drop in the code—just waiting there to be picked up.

Exploit strategy

The main idea was to stack the score multiplier powerup (Score Attack, green bag) many times, and then either get the Nuke (black/purple cylinder) or just rack up manual AI kills. Picking up the Nuke would grant 400 Points multiplied by the amount of Score Attacks active. Getting manual AI kills would increase the Personal Score, which equaled to the XP output at the end of the game. We initially wanted to reach 1 million Points just to see if the UI could handle it, and then afterwards we realized we could get a massive amount of XP from just getting AI kills.

We refined our exploit strategy as the match went on, and it eventually turned into one person spamming the Score Attack on the platform while the remaining players got AI kills manually in the map using the OP weapons found outside the map. Our exploiting fun came to an unexpected end after around one hour of using it, as the AI stopped spawning completely. I believe this was due to a combination of some dynamic object limits with dropped grenades, and us spamming the Nuke powerup at the very beginning which caused all the AI to die at the same time, possibly leading to weirdness.

The payout and reporting

In the end we accumulated a hefty amount of XP for each member at the end of the game. 205,920 for EliteFalcon, 186,600 for me and 69,540 for MaxBloodBath—something akin of 50 15–minute BTB games worth per player, all in one 1.5 hour–long match. The STU mode was slated to be removed from the temporary community workshop playlist just two days later, and TFF had their sights on moving to developing UEFN content in just 5 days, so we joked about this being a funny send-off for Halo Infinite.

After we were done, I reported the bug publicly in the TFF Discord, and privately to Halo Studios (then 343 Industries), so they were aware of it, and could easily fix it if the mode were to ever land back into matchmaking. We didn't think much of the exploit afterwards as we were confident it was going to get fixed and never see the light of day again...

The return of Survive The Undead... and the exploit

After a year since its latest spotlight in matchmaking, STU was once again added as a playlist to the game on Oct 7th, 2025, this time permanently. I was excited to see if my strategy guide was still up-to-date, and that I could jump in and have some guaranteed fun with friends again. The remaining Halo player base didn't disappoint either, making the mode be quickly the most popular mode in matchmaking and letting players reach new wave records with the addition of the new map "Station of The Lost".

The mode had been updated to include some new weapons and better UI communication for the powerups, which were welcome additions. I also confirmed that the previous window bug on Night of The Undead had been fixed. Even TFF members who were deep in their UEFN projects at this point got interested in playing Halo Infinite again as their mode had arrived back into matchmaking with a fresh coat of paint.

The new, and much worse exploit

Me, TFF and Silverwve had been focusing on finding optimal strats for reaching high waves in STU and we were making great progress; the guys had reached wave 100 in a 4-hour game, and we were hitting new legit records for highest score in an unranked game, even bypassing the previous scores we had illegitimately gotten with the exploit in 2024.

That was until the evening of Oct 17th, 2025—eerily close to a year after the original exploit was found—I got a DM from EliteFalcon asking me to jump in a call. He had been checking the top score leaderboards and seen that some players had jumped to the top of the charts with more than a million personal score—completely out of the range for a legit game. And these weren't just any players, they were some well-known top forgers: UneeQ TV, Artifice7285 and Mr Greencastle as well as CHL Shade, who was the first person to reach Hero rank in Halo Infinite.

While still in the call with EliteFalcon, I loaded up one of these matches of theirs in Theater—Halo Infinite's match playback tool—to see what they did to achieve these crazy scores. It turned out to be basically the same exploit as last year, this time just on a different window.

Reason for the high XP

I fast forwarded the theater film to get to the core of the exploit, which followed in the same footsteps as our previous one (which was only known by me and TFF still), just this time majorly benefitting from a change to the Nuke powerup where it would now grant personal score to the player for all the AI kills as a result from the Nuke. Combine that with a high Score Attack multiplier and you'd be getting 50,000 XP from just walking over the Nuke powerup.

Also, an update to the mode allowed players to now pull powerups towards them by shooting them. This was done to let players scavenge dropped powerups from the windows where the AI spawn, but it also benefitted the efficiency of this exploit as players could use a Sentinel Beam to quickly pull the ever-respawning powerups towards them instead of walking back and forth, which was quicker.

That was basically the extent of the exploit on their group's part. The motive for them was obviously to get Hero rank for their accounts due to having spent the majority of their time in Forge, and providing tons of live-service content for free for the game to stay alive. They did not let anyone know about the exploit, and it stayed a secret for 4 days, until the top 10 leaderboards refreshed on leafapp, and EliteFalcon spotted the anomaly.

Exploiting the bug with TFF... again

So this time the objective for us was clear: see how far we can push this exploit after seeing what was now possible with an unrefined strategy. We went into these games with the sneaking suspicion that we may face some repercussions afterwards, but Halo Infinite was on its last legs, and most of us had finished our Forge projects or even dropped the game entirely, so at the very least we'd get a great story out of it if what we thought to be possible panned out.

The group

We had once again gathered the same group of me, MaxBloodBath and EliteFalcon to try out the exploit (which had somehow gotten missed by Halo Studios' quality assurance even though a similar bug was reported and fixed previously on the same map), this time just with Silverwve filling our 4th slot. We met Silver through him reaching the highest solo run of wave 87 in STU, and then running some games with him trying to get the first wave 100, which was eventually reached. He's also got the longest matchmaking game in Infinite which is also the highest legit score game.

The motive for most of us was the same as the other group: to get Hero rank for having spent so much time on the game providing Halo Studios with free content, and no XP in return. For Silver it was a way to gain back lost XP from the multiple high-round STU games where the match crashed, or just had the game not log the stats and XP after completion.

The core strategy

Our strategy evolved during the five Night of The Undead games we ended up playing, but they all started in a similar manner. In the first game starting from wave 4, we were able to activate a hidden Easter Egg on the map which granted all players a Heatwave + Purging Shock Rifle combo which was basically the best gun in the mode, as well as a Gravity Hammer to one player. The details of the Easter Egg are explained later, but for now that's what we did.

Only 3 minutes into the game, we escaped the map and headed for the powerup platform we started calling the "dev menu". Using the Gravity Hammer, EliteFalcon boosted me and Silver onto the platform and we started running the exploit. At this point we were still developing the strategy and seeing what worked, so it was sloppy, but still fast.

It quickly became apparent that each player had to play a specific role in the exploit in order for it to be the most efficient at maximizing XP output. The initial roles were divided as such:

1. XP Receiver: Shoots the Score Attack until it's over 50x multiplier and picks up the Nuke to kill all the enemies and receives the score for the kills.
2. Powerup Fetcher Outside Map: Pulls any floating powerups from the sky at a spot where the AI were teleported to when dying from a Nuke. This would reset the powerups back to the platform.
3. Powerup Fetcher Inside Map: Fetches any powerups that appear in the map from AI dying so they reset back to the platform.
4. Helper: Occasionally helps the XP Receiver with the Max Ammo powerup; we hadn't refined their role yet.

My Hero grind

I was the person with the most XP to begin with, requiring only about 800,000 XP to reach Hero, so I took the role of the XP Receiver in the first game. The entire game lasted only 21 minutes, and this was our first one when we were just getting started. Getting that XP amount is around 800 10–15-minute games for your average casual player. Keep in mind I was already around 92% of the way to finishing the Hero grind legitimately (excluding that 2024 exploit game), but I was still all-in on participating in the exploit as I just wanted to get some fun out of the game. I got my Hero rank and we moved on to the next game.

100x score multiplier

The focus was on Silver in the second game where we mostly kept refining our strategy by starting to use Sentinel Beams to pull the powerups faster, and starting to think about grenade cleanup, since we suspect having hundreds of dropped grenades from the AI was causing crashes and FX overload on the map. We also reached 100x score multiplier for the first time in this game after starting to realize what was the fastest way to pick up the powerup.

15 minutes into the game we had MaxBloodBath's game crash, so we abruptly ended the match as we didn't want to face any oddities from a player quitting. This was already enough for Silver to gather 961,990 score though—nearly a million XP in 15 minutes.

FX Overload

The third match was short-lived as Silver started spamming the Nuke which made my game crash. The game was ended and we continued to the next match. For the first 5 minutes of the fourth game, I was in the role of the Powerup Fetcher Outside Map, seeing if I could blow up the dropped grenades with a pistol. Unfortunately, the grenades were exploding one-by-one instead of causing a chain reaction, leading to the grenades just being scattered everywhere and not helping much with the FX overload situation.

Shortly after EliteFalcon suggested to start cleaning up the grenades with his Gravity Hammer, so I switched roles with him to being primarily inside the map running around to find any dropped powerups to return back to the platform. That player's role was actually the most difficult as you had the risk of dying to the AI, and you had to constantly be looking around the map for the dropped powerups as any time a Nuke or Score Attack would be in the map, it would halt the exploit.

I quickly realized you couldn't be actually inside the map, so even I escaped the confines of the building and just patrolled outside it looking for the powerups. You still had to have a very good loadout such as the Heatwave + Purging Shock Rifle and a Disruptor + Volatile Skewer so you could clear out any enemies that you happened to face on your own.

28 minutes into the game, we started getting FX glitches as we weren't able to clean up the dropped grenades enough, so the budget became overloaded. In order to play it safe, and to not result in a game crash, we ended the game.

The 10,000,000 XP game

As the fifth and final game started, we made the accidental realization that we could effectively clean up the dropped grenades with a Ravager charge shot. Silver was initially thinking of upgrading the Ravager to shoot Volatile Skewer shots, but my BTB knowledge came in clutch and I realized we could use the charge shot to explode all the grenades within the flames it produced, as that was a gimmick of the weapon. This cleanup method was crucial for ensuring we could have a lengthy match on this map, as otherwise we'd most likely crash from the FX overload.

I once again stayed in the map while the others were around the platform. MaxBloodBath came into the map momentarily in an attempt to roll a Ravager so he could also assist in the grenade cleanup efforts. Max got super lucky by rolling a Ravager on his second try, and he was quickly back on his way to the platform.

The majority of the game after that point was quite straightforward. Everyone just executing their own roles, which led us to gather up score quickly for EliteFalcon who we had set the goal for reaching 10,000,000 score in one game. That meant 680,650 more than the 9,319,350 required for reaching Hero from nothing. We just wanted to have that round number of 10 million to be able to screenshot it later.

Having now refined our roles to the maximum, they were divided as follows:

1. XP Receiver: Shoots the Score Attack until it's at 70-120 multiplier and picks up the Nuke to kill all the enemies and receive the score for the kills resulting in 60,000—75,000 score each time a Nuke is picked up.
2. Helper: Shoots the Score Attack when the XP Receiver is reloading so there's no downtime. Picks up the Max Ammo. Shoots the grenades on the floor with a Ravager charge shot to aid in grenade cleanup efforts.
3. Powerup Fetcher Outside Map: Pulls any floating powerups from the sky at a spot where AI were teleported to when dying from a Nuke. This would reset the powerups back to the platform. Shoots the grenades on the floor with a Ravager charge shot to aid in grenade cleanup efforts.
4. Powerup Fetcher Inside Map: Fetches any powerups that appear in the map from AI dying so they reset back to the platform.

We continued our monotonous roles for a straight 1.5 hours before EliteFalcon started to near 10,000,000 score. Occasionally I went to glance at the machine-like tasks the others were doing, and at one point we even achieved the record score multiplier of 140x, which was exciting, and a sign of great teamwork. At 1 hour 55 minutes into the game we anticipated for the 8-figure score to finally be reached, and not long after, EliteFalcon had done it.

We ended the game by jumping off the map and realistically anticipated for the game to not count the massive scores obtained by all players, but surprisingly, everything worked! EliteFalcon had instantly surpassed 87 ranks from 2,036,850 XP to reach Hero and the post-match screen was insane. Shortly after we also realized that the game was 117 minutes long—it was peak.

The aftermath

They say "All good things must come to an end", so now we reach the aftermath of the exploit. After our session, I let Mr Greencastle know that we had also done the exploit. At this point we were still presumably the only ones who knew about it and no damage or harm was done to anyone else. HCS Worlds 2025 was right around the corner in a week and and we were satisfied that we had gotten the Hero rank we arguably deserved.

Fast forward to Sunday Oct 26th at HCS Worlds 2025 where during an evening activity, a Halo Studios employee was let know about the exploit we had done. Clearly unaware of it, they stated that it would obviously get fixed before we even got back home from Worlds, but no other implications were expressed.

Banning

11 days after Worlds on Nov 7th, 2025, EliteFalcon hit me up in DMs at 0:32 UTC —"yo you up?". It turns out all members of The Forge Falcons had gotten removed from a private matchmaking forger Discord with no explanation. Of course, I thought it was related to the exploit, but why were only the TFF members removed? —there were still multiple other offenders. At 1:34 UTC, in-game bans were handed out. With still no explanation about what the cause of them were, 14 players were hit with Halo Infinite bans of various lengths.

The list of affected players and ban lengths were:

• I EliteFalcon I: Permanent (9999-10-28)
• MaxBloodBath: Permanent (9999-11-07)
• Okom1: 92 days (2026-02-07)
• Artifice7285: 92 days (2026-02-07)
• UneeQ TV: 92 days (2026-02-07)
• Mr Greencastle: 92 days (2026-02-07)
• CHL Shade: 92 days (2026-02-07)
• MLG Shade O: 92 days (2026-02-07)
• Silverwveee: 92 days (2026-02-07)
• Mr Multibit: 92 days (2026-02-07)
• Prim 27: 30 days (2025-12-07)
• SWAT Iz 4 KAZER: 30 days (2025-12-07)
• ArtN00b: 30 days (2025-12-07)
• MrsMultibit: 30 days (2025-12-07)

These were all people who were in matches where the exploit had been done. The reason for the various ban lenghts is still unclear, but based on the main offending games: 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5, it had something to do with how much XP players gained. That still didn't explain the permanent (and outrageous) bans, and removal from the matchmaking Discord of TFF members.

The undisclosed Easter Egg

What I believe to be the reason for the out-of-pocket perma bans for TFF members was Halo Studios' discovery of an undisclosed Easter Egg on the Night of The Undead map that was added in 2025. By shooting four colored barrels outside the map in a specific order, all players would be given a Heatwave + Purging Shock Rifle combo, and the Easter Egg activator would also be given a Gravity Hammer. Getting these overpowered weapons as early as wave 4 for free was obviously breaking the normal progression of the gamemode.

What the Easter Egg was a reference to was the TFF Forge Panel at HCS Worlds 2024 where the four TFF members had T-Shirts of various colors. From left to right the colors were: black, pink, green & blue; this was the order the colored barrels had to be shot at in order to activate the Easter Egg. For me, a story not unlike that of the IWHBYD Skull from Halo 3, as when I saw a screenshot of EliteFalcon holding a Gravity Hammer on Night of The Undead, I loaded up the map in Forge and dissected it down object-by-object to finally find the Easter Egg code after 30 minutes. The difference here was that I didn't leak the Easter Egg.

Thie code for this Easter Egg was hidden in the Weapon Upgrade machine inside a prefabbed Script Brain, so players loading up the map in Forge couldn't select all the Script Brains on the map and find it, as it was not a singular object—on the surface an obvious attempt at hiding a script. The real offense was not having reported this Easter Egg to Halo Studios when the map had been updated and ingested back into the quality assurance team's hands 3 months before it would land into matchmaking again in 2025.

Had the new Easter Egg been disclosed at the time of submission, the perma bans probably wouldn't have happened as they would've probably removed it, and I can see this being interpreted as an intentional exploit due to what the Easter Egg granted to the players. But looking at the conversations of the newest STU maps being ingested in the private Discord, there aren't any mentions from Halo Studios staff reminding TFF members to update the list of scripts and Easter Eggs on the map, so the instructions from the side of the studio weren't without fault either.

No communication

A disturbingly common topic with anything Halo Studios is involved with is a lack of communication, and this exploit along with the bans (presumably) handed out due to it are no exception. None of the members affected by the bans have been given adequate reasoning as to why they were banned, so we're all still just assuming it was due to this exploit. Keep in mind over half of the players affected were in a private Discord with Halo Studios staff who we've built professional working relationships with, and yet even we're being left in the dark about why we're banned from a game we've provided free content for over 3 years.

All members of The Forge Falcons—the people who created Survive The Undead—were abruptly kicked from said Discord and all communication efforts towards Halo Studios staff requesting clarification about the situation have not been responded to for over a week at the time of writing. The only statement we've received has been from Halo Support stating that our bans for "Unsporting Conduct" will not be reduced or removed.

Even Halo Support on X chose to not mention anything about fixing the exploit on Night of The Undead, instead just mentioning a minor fix to the map in order to seemingly mask why the map needed to be removed from matchmaking for a few days. Usually maps which are a part of the highest performing and most popular playlist in the game don't get removed from matchmaking because players may accidentally get stuck in a corner.

Personal comments

Okom1

I think some form of bans are justified to not make Halo Studios look like they are giving forgers special treatment (trust me, they aren't), but not for this long, and especially not permanent bans. Banning a group of forgers permanently who you've worked with for nearly two years bringing content into matchmaking and providing zero information as to why they're suddenly banished is not a good look (this phrase sounds oddly familiar...).

Also making everyone's bans affect not only matchmaking but also the ability to forge while still keeping the store accessible for microtransactions is certainly a choice. Artifice7285 is (was?) also a contract worker for Halo Studios, having built SnD Extraction and 1v1 Showdown for them, so I wonder how that's going to pan out going forward. I know he was left as much in the dark about the ban reasoning as anyone else as it was happening, so no special treatment for him either.

What's the most offending to me personally is the lack of communication. It certainly looks like Halo Studios are trying to hide that this situation ever happened with them not addressing the issue in their patch notes, and not responding to the top active forgers who have been integral to the game's lifespan for the past three years.

Members of The Forge Falcons who got banned are community forgers that Halo Studios has literally spotlighted on multiple occasions, and even featured on a 45-minute panel at the community stage of their largest event in 2024, yet they're not worthy of being communicated to why they were permanently banned from playing the game and removed from a private Discord. Unbelievable.

Exploit clarifications

1. The window bugs were not something TFF left in intentionally. The first window bug was difficult to spot, and that bug with One-Way Blockers wasn't even known at the time as something to be recognized by forgers. TFF fixed the window after we used the exploit. The second window bug was most likely an accidental object move when TFF was updating the art on the map to not be made out of only primitive objects. The fact it wasn't spotted falls on Halo Studios' QA team as they should've had a log of the previous time a window bug was on the map and double-checked all the windows again.
2. MaxBloodBath blocked access to the powerup platform on Night of The Undead in a save that was made right after I reported the first window bug. Somehow this fix didn't make it into the latest submitted version—possibly a version revert happened at some point. But an effort was made by TFF to fix these exploits. The floating weapon stash was also deleted, which did make it into the new version.
3. The barrel Easter Egg which gave the OP weapons is irrelevant to the exploit. It merely just sped up our efforts in killing AI faster so we could get some points for the perks and buy the weapons we needed for the exploit. The other group had no idea of the Easter Egg and were able to do the exploit just like our group did. Unfortunately not disclosing the Easter Egg to Halo Studios broke a separate agreement and I think is considered something that could be seen as giving players an unfair advantage, so I think it was the cause of the permanent bans.
4. The powerup platform being low enough to reach was just negligence from the forger—not thinking of the possibility that players could get access to it if somehow a bug to break out the map was found.

CHL Shade

I reached out to CHL Shade who found the exploit in 2025 and shared it with his crew. Here's what he had to say about the situation: