All good things must come to an end, and Bungie's completed the transition of its full range of services for the Halo series of games to 343 Industries. What does that mean for gamers? You can no longer sign up for the Bungie Pro service (for recording and hosting videos of your matches), all the statistics and kill-tracking that Bungie's recorded for its Halo games have stopped, and you can no longer download maps or gametypes, to name a few features.
Bungie's published an extensive Q&A about the different features that are staying and going as part of its big transition. And since statistics-tracking is gone, Bungie's also released a final, epic highlight of just how much time gamers have put into the Halo universe – and more importantly, just how much killin' they've been doin'.
Here are some highlights: Over the past eight years or thereabouts, gamers have run around killing each other in more than 20 billion games of Halo. Halo 3/ODST remains the most popular title for fraggin', with more than 11.5 billion games played since September 9, 2004. Time-wise, all this Halo activity represents more than 123 billion combined hours of gaming -- or more than 85 million days.
All of these Halo firefights resulted in more than 136 billion kills, or more kills than the total estimated number of human beings that have ever lived on Earth, period. Halo gamers seem to love using Halo's three-shot-burst Battle Rifle to kill each other the most, as Bungie recorded more than 15.9 billion kills for that weapon alone for Halo 3. And Halo players have earned a bit over 79 billion medals for their gaming: In-game awards based on a player's actions during a typical multiplayer match.
In total, gamers have invested 235,182 years in combined Halo playtime – or, as Bungie puts it, "in the collective time you've spent playing Halo you could have travelled across the expanse of the Milky Way at the speed of light… and back."
For more from David, subscribe to him on Facebook: David Murphy.
