I'm not sure if you're just incredibly naive
"Someone tells guy that explained to a 343 employee and wrote documentation for said employee on how the Reach version of the Halo engine worked naive"
or if you're just purposely ignoring available information because it conflicts with the stance you decided on a long time ago. One more time... THE GAME IS NOW BEING PLAYED ONLINE. It's not being played online on Microsoft's servers, people are playing the game via p2p methods.
Via LAN emulators. Which people have been doing for every single Halo that has existed. ElDorito is not a network emulator nor are people playing Halo games online by sidestepping Microsoft's official online service new. The online you are seeing people play are because the Halo 3 LAN mode was found to still be inside the game. It simply lets you bring up the menu that starts LAN from inside the hallowed husk of Halo 3's codestack.
This is completely incomparable to something like DSFix and does bypass the game's payment model.
So something that lets you change how a game functions is different from letting you change how a game functions?
Also, Halo Online does not have a payment model at this point. You're not bypassing any payment model. In fact, Microsoft actually came out with a statement and they're not even using the word piracy, but rather saying they're trying to prevent negative impact from Americans using Russian servers during testing:
Microsoft said:
While we’re thrilled there's so much interest outside of Russia, the beta of Halo Online is a PC experience tailored specifically for the tastes, tech and infrastructure of the Russian market and furthermore, is still in an early state. As such, we want to ensure a quality experience for our beta participants within Russia which could be impacted through unauthorized use.
Microsoft actually does NOT want Americans on the official servers right now!
Even a free player is part of the payment ecosystem when playing on MS' servers, as they become the baseline that the paying player is paying to gain an advantage over
As I just pointed out above, Microsoft doesn't consider non-Russians potential lost players in their own words.
With something like DSFix, the user has already paid for the game prior to using it.
Because Dark Souls costs money. Halo online is free.
With this, playing on a virtual LAN removes the possibility for you to pay anything towards the game
I think this is more impacted by the fact that you literally can't pay for anything in the game right now, and we can more than likely safely assume they're going to block American CCs from buying anything for the game. Most non-Russians playing the final product will probably have to stick with what the game give you for free unless you find a way to give MS rubles.
and there's simply a trainer that allows you to play using any of the items that usually require payment. So no, it isn't "helping to sell microtransactions", because it honestly can't. If something in the US want to play Halo Online on MS' servers, they'll need a VPN, not ElDorito
So ElDorito simultaneously lets you get around microtransactions that don't exist in a game that is 100% free, infiltrating a payment token system backed by gigantic processing companies but won't let you get around a basic region check?
Also, how would any trainer get around the very basic server-side authentication checks that would prevent you from equipping any paid content? If it was that easy then no F2P game would make money.
I could explain to you in detail of how the Halo engine works, with it's tag system and resource management and client side vs server side functionality, but I annoy
HaloGAF with enough of those posts already. If you want a real world example, nobody was able to run around on Live with similar access to the game's data with Bungie flames in Halo 3 or Reach. "hur hur I got flames" was done via modifying films to put the flame chest on your Spartan, and that's because films did not do authorization checks for player armor.
In some ways it's worse than standard piracy, as f2p games live or die by their playercount, including those playing for free
Microsoft does not consider non-Russians lost players or sales, per their statement.
You need a consistently large players base in order for the few whales to exist that pay the bills.
Which Microsoft wants to be all Russians.
Pirating a standard game has an isolated effect on the product because if say your friend wants to play it with you, he may just buy a legit copy. In this case however, there's no copy to buy, but if your friend wants to play with you, and you're playing via virtual LAN, removed from the MS servers and their ecosystem, then your friend will have to do the same too.
This just in: playing on LAN is piracy. Every time you play a game of Team Slayer at a LAN you're taking food right out of Xbox Live's children's mouths.
Every player that's playing using the modified client is directly strengthening that client, whilst weakening the official product.
Every player that is using the mod aren't wanted on the official product's servers. Because they're not Russian.
I don't know how many words it will take, but with the way the engine works and what ElDorito actually does and the statements from the group of modders working on this that outright say they don't want to let you get paid content for free, and the fact that even the "but it'll split the playerbase" doesn't fly because Microsoft considers Russia the only playerbase for Halo Online at the moment and they themselves have not used the word piracy in any official statement, and the fact that I myself am definitely anti-piracy being a developer, I'm not going to stump for the technical side of the Halo community unless I knew what was up.