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Halo 5 Uses Dedicated Servers for All Multiplayer, Including Custom Games

343 Industries is doing away with peer-to-peer connections for the next Halo game's online multiplayer.

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Halo 5: Guardians' online multiplayer mode exclusively uses dedicated servers, even when playing custom games.

This news comes by way of executive producer Josh Holmes, who responded to a question about dedicated servers on the Beyond Entertainment forums. "We only have dedicated servers for MP in Halo 5: Guardians," Holmes wrote. "That's true for matchmaking AND customs. There is no P2P."

What this means is that you'll never have to rely on problematic peer-to-peer connections when playing multiplayer, even when it's simply a custom game you've set up with your friends online. This has not been the case in the past, resulting in what's known as Host Advantage, which refers to the edge that the player serving as the connection host has in peer-to-peer games.

Most recently, Halo: The Master Chief Collection used a combination of dedicated servers and peer-to-peer, with all custom games (and online campaign missions) using the latter.

Following its multiplayer beta earlier this year, Guardians is set for release sometime this fall. We should be learning more about the game soon, as a teaser website recently went live that's counting down to March 22 at 6 PM Pacific.

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