Halo 5 Is Ditching The Team Skirmish Multiplayer Playlist

Another Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer playlist is going to be removed soon according to 343 Industries, Team Skirmish being the latest one to leave the game.

Removing playlists such as these isn't anything new for 343 Industries, an action that they'll occasionally take if a playlist has a low enough player count that makes keeping it running not worth the effort that could be devoted to other, more popular game modes. Shotty Snipers and Triple Team were two other game modes that were removed earlier in the year due to minimal participation, though 343 Industries says that having to take away these game modes is never something that they enjoy.

As we've mentioned in the past, the Halo 5 sustain team is continuously monitoring game data and player feedback to adjust and react where needed to ensure the matchmaking experience is as good as possible for the majority of online players. As player trends and preferences ebb and flow, so too does the health and viability of particular playlists. Sometimes this results in changes to matchmaking criteria and parameters (as 343's Josh Menke has spoken about at length over the past few months) and other times a playlist just fundamentally struggles to maintain a healthy, consistent population and hit the quality bar we strive to maintain. It's never fun to take away something that players (even if it's a relatively small group) have become accustomed to and it's not something the team takes lightly, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

Aside from just having a low player count, 343 says that having Team Skirmish as a playlist negatively impacted other game modes such as Team Arena and HCS, citing plenty of overlap between the three playlists.

Not every part of Team Skirmish will be disappearing, though, as they're looking to incorporate some unique maps ang game modes that Team Skirmish had into some of the other playlists. The Mythic Shotty Snipers rotational playlist is returning for two weeks as well, so having that game mode back for a while will hopefully give Team Skirmish players something to look forward to as their playlist is phased out.

Team Skirmish game modes will be removed on Aug. 8, so get in a couple more games while you still can.