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Report on the Offline Capabilities of Halo: MCC for PC (RE-REUPDATED)

Arnox

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UPDATE 4: Turns out, adding a secondary email does NOT work for Microsoft games after all. You can create the account and do whatever you want with it, but the second you try signing in to a Microsoft-published game, it will insta-lock the account and force a phone number to be registered. Now, I have a suspicion that it's actually my VPN that's setting it off, but either way, it's unacceptable and doesn't even stop spammers.

UPDATE 3: It has come to my attention that you actually don't need to add a phone number if you add a secondary email instead. See this topic for details. You can now ignore all the updates below.

UPDATE 2: Just a long overdue confirmation of the first update. All accounts made in MCC on the PC will always force you to enter a phone number after a certain amount of time has passed. I've since refunded the game.

UPDATE: Just had Microsoft fuck me over by locking my account out and forcing me to put in a phone number to unlock it again. Absolute bullshit. Do not buy this scamware until this is changed.

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After a bit of investigating online, I went and bought the PC version of Halo: MCC to test it out. Honestly, I was not expecting what I got. Or should I say, I knew what was coming but I didn't quite believe it to be true until I tried it myself. They actually shipped a game that doesn't have any microtransactions, is fully playable offline, has a bit of mod support (with more to come down the line, or so they say), and is actually pretty cheap. Once you've been in gaming for as long as I have, you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but in this case, MIRACULOUSLY, that hasn't happened. Or at least not yet.

However...

There is actually one catch. Assuming you're not sailing the high seas or equivalent, you need to make an Xbox Live profile or have one saved in the proper directories in order to even get past the first screen. Even if you don't have an internet connection, it will error out and it won't let you past the screen in any way. Even if you put Steam in Offline Mode, it will still error out.

Thankfully though, that is where the bullshit both begins and ends, and why I'll still clear the game as fully acceptable. Specifically, you can get past this inane restriction by making a junk email account on mail.com and signing up for a Live account through that. After that, once you have your profile saved, you can play offline however much you want with no restrictions. It will take a little bit each time you start up the game though since it will try to sign in first before giving up and putting you into the main menu.

Final Breakdown of Offline Capabilities:
Can play without Live profileNo
Can play without signing inYes
Can play all single-player game modes offlineYes
Can make custom variants offlineYes
Can save custom variants offlineYes (file naming seems to be broken at the moment though)
Full customization options available offlineYes
 
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Battousai

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Yeah the phone number is pretty usual nowadays for all these gaming launchers really. Most of them do it, I got the Steam Mobile one for example since its required if I actually want to trade or sell stuff on the market without having to wait 7 days each time, it has added security at least which has helped me to regain my account one time it was hacked. Other launchers like Uplay also recommend me to do it, but it is not enforced nor have I ever had a lockdown with it. I don't know about Microsoft however since I've never had a gaming account with them.

The point is plain and simple however, they want you to use their phone apps as a marketing tactic to boost popularity and sales. The additional security added by this whole two way login is basically just a bonus. The point is to make more money.
 

Arnox

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Bump for second update. Just a long overdue confirmation of the first update. All accounts made in MCC on the PC will always force you to enter a phone number after a certain amount of time has passed. I've since refunded the game.
 
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