Italy Fines Apple €98.6 Million Over App Store Dominance 
OpenAI Explores Massive Funding Round at $750 Billion Valuation 
ByteDance Plans Massive AI Investment in 2026 to Close Gap With U.S. Tech Giants 
Moore Threads Unveils New GPUs, Fuels Optimism Around China’s AI Chip Ambitions 
U.S. Lawmakers Urge Pentagon to Blacklist More Chinese Tech Firms Over Military Ties 
Republicans Raise National Security Concerns Over Intel’s Testing of China-Linked Chipmaking Tools 
Texas App Store Age Verification Law Blocked by Federal Judge in First Amendment Ruling 
Nvidia and Groq Strike Strategic AI Inference Licensing Deal 
FTC Praises Instacart for Ending AI Pricing Tests After $60M Settlement 
Meta Acquires AI Startup Manus to Expand Advanced AI Capabilities Across Platforms 
Oracle Stock Slides After Blue Owl Exit Report, Company Says Michigan Data Center Talks Remain on Track 
Elon Musk’s xAI Expands Supercomputer Infrastructure With Third Data Center to Boost AI Training Power 
noyb Files GDPR Complaints Against TikTok, Grindr, and AppsFlyer Over Alleged Illegal Data Tracking. 
Samsung Electronics Secures Annual U.S. Licence for China Chip Equipment Imports in 2026 
Nvidia to Acquire Groq in $20 Billion Deal to Boost AI Chip Dominance 
TSMC Honors Japanese Chip Equipment Makers With 2025 Supplier Awards 
Video game studios are back to work after developers go for their well-deserved breaks during the holidays. As for 343 Industries, the first order of business is fixing the matchmaking issues in Big Team Battle (BTB).
Halo community director Brian “ske7ch” Jarrard addressed “Halo Infinite” players on Monday, promising that 343 Industries is already working on the matchmaking issues largely affecting players trying to join BTB matches as a group. “We’re optimistic to say we believe we have a fix in hand for the core issue,” Jarrard wrote on a Halo Waypoint forum post. “This went into QA last week, and so far it’s looking positive - we are not seeing this issue occur internally using this build.”
The said BTB matchmaking fix will still go through more testing before moving forward to the certification process, which is one of the last stages before a patch is ready for release. Jarrard said they cannot commit yet to a specific release date for the “Halo Infinite” update. However, he told players not to expect it to go live this week.
It can be recalled that players started reporting persistent matchmaking issues when trying to enter a BTB match with their friends just a few weeks after “Halo Infinite” officially launched last Dec. 8. At the time, 343 Industries said the issue “was not prevalent” during the open beta, but it became more persistent after the game’s release.
The studio tried to address the issue with some workarounds, such as reducing the maximum fireteam size from 12 to 10. The join-in-progress capabilities were also disabled in the hopes of lessening the BTB matchmaking issues. But the “Halo Infinite” developer determined they did not deliver significant improvements to the multiplayer mode, so the said functions were later reinstated.
The “Halo Infinite” developer said at the time that a fix for the BTB matchmaking issue was planned to be released in January, which is corroborated by Jarrard’s forum post this week. 343 Industries also previously noted solo queue players were more likely to be successful in joining a BTB match and larger fireteams tend to encounter the problem more.
