Microsoft is taking legal action against a fan-made Halo Online mod, ElDewrito.

However, the software giant stopped short of sending a game-killing cease and desist letter to the mod’s developers.

The story of ElDewrito is as interesting as it is convoluted. Back in 2015, developers of the Halo franchise 343 Industries and Sabre Interactive partnered with Russian publisher Innova Systems to bring a version of Halo to the Russian market. The game would be multiplayer-only and based heavily on Halo 3, essentially distilling the best of the game’s multiplayer experience and then optimizing it to run on lower-spec machines.

The result was Halo Online, which went into a brief closed beta in the spring of 2015.

Then things seemed to fall apart. Halo Online was supposed to launch in 2016, but after numerous delays on the part of Microsoft, the game’s servers were taken down in December of 2015. This looked like it would be the end of the project, except some of the game’s code slipped out and made it into the wild. There, it found a home with a small group of Halo enthusiasts. They nurtured it, added to it, and eventually created a mod that allowed the game to be run on a player’s server instead of Microsoft’s.

They called it ElDewrito, a play on the El Dorado map of Halo legend and the Dorito and Mountain Dew munching gremlin that most people assume such modders to actually be.

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With ElDewrito’s help, the game flourished, eventually getting thousands of concurrent players enjoying classic Halo multiplayer gameplay. But there was a flaw: the team that made ElDewrito assumed that the code was open-source since they found it in the wild, but it wasn’t. It was illegally leaked, and the code still belonged to Microsoft.

In a post on 343 Industries blog, the official Halo developers explained the awful situation that although ElDewrito is much beloved by its fans they couldn’t continue development as things stood. Microsoft’s legal team issued takedown notices to anyone hosting their code, and it seemed like the game would die.

But maybe not, The ElDewrito mod itself is all open-source, and only the original Halo Online files belong to Microsoft. If a player can find those files in the wild, they can download the mod and play the game.

For their part, the ElDewrito team is taking 343’s advice and ceasing development for the time being. The future of the game is up in the air, but one thing is for sure: there is definitely a market for classic Halo multiplayer action. If Microsoft won’t cater to it, then the community will.

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