Bungie hasn't been the Halo company for some time now. Since breaking from Microsoft, the studio has managed to firmly establish a new identity, far removed from Master Chief and the gang. Next month, Bungie cuts one of the last remaining threads to their flagship Xbox franchise, as an archive of stats, screenshots and custom gametypes goes offline for good.
Tucked away in the first This Week At Bungie post of the year, community manager Dylan Gafner took a moment away from Destiny to ring in the final hours of Bungie's legacy Halo site. While it hasn't been updated in over nine years, the site remained online as a memorial to thousands of community stats and creations taken from Halo's 2 through Reach.
"On February 9, the halo.bungie.net website will be taken offline permanently," Gafner writes. "Everyone is welcome to save their stats and files, however they can, if they'd like to save anything. Please keep in mind that our News articles, Forums, and Groups were imported into the current version of Bungie.net back in 2013."
After wrapping up Halo: Reach, Bungie handed off Halo stewardship to new studio 343 Industries. Now, 343 did a (mostly) bang-up job of bringing the original games to PC last year with Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but largely ignored the community content that came before—save for a one-time transfer of legacy maps and games.
Bungie has at least given folks a few weeks to archive what they can before the site goes down. With a bit of rooting around, I even found a handful of my own screenshots (uploaded by a 14-year-old Nat with a profoundly embarrassing gamertag). Beyond Halo, the site even contained hubs for older Bungie titles like Myth, Marathon, and the studio's short-lived indie publishing wing Bungie Aerospace.
The old site might've been stagnant, but it was a neat little peek into Bungie's pre-Destiny past. It's a small shame to see it go.
