Broke 0.5 Vistas Mitigated well documented Dec 8, 2021 their #48 worst broke on record

Halo Infinite launched without a preload, downloads took the day

Halo Infinite campaign launch hit by slow downloads, stutter and save corruption

↳ caused by Halo Infinite campaign launch

The market's verdict: -2.0% on MSFT in the week after.

Status: Mitigated

What actually happened

The Halo Infinite campaign arrived December 8, 2021 with no preload, so day one players spent much of it watching a slow download instead of the ring, followed by launch crashes, long session stutter and, within days, a save corruption bug tied to Xbox sign ins that wiped progress. 343's own known issues advisory dropped the next day. The flagship that had already been delayed a year arrived with a support page as its first mission. The game underneath was good, which made the packaging sting more, not less.

This one is well documented.

Were you affected? Unbreak it

Hotfixes and advisories rolled out through December 2021

Microsoft has acknowledged this issue; a fix ships in an out-of-band or next cumulative update. Check Windows Release Health before manual workarounds.

They did it more than once

Before that: The Master Chief Collection collected everything except working matchmaking (Nov 2014)

2014: couldn't matchmake. 2021: couldn't download. The flagship ships broken, traditionly.

Timeline

Dec 8, 2021 Mitigated Microsoft put safeguards around it.