Last week, GrifballHub launched their Grifball at RTX Kickstarter.  The last two years, they’ve fundraised their booth for Grifball presence on the show floor with free swag and playable Halo.  This year, they’re looking to do the same thing with some new reward items you can only get through funding the project.  Help support the Halo community and if you’re there in Austin this August, drop by the booth and say, “Hi!”

On the news front this week, Halo: Spartan Strike is now out on Windows 8, Steam and iOS, for $5.99.  The next Halo MCC patch is due this week after passing Xbox certification and addresses ranking fixes including deployment to other playlists, new penalties and monitoring for quitting and betrayals, and updated Halo 3 Forge to include forging game type specific modes.

Richard Simms, better known as TheSimms is a competitive Halo commentator heralding from the UK.  Simms started playing Halo competitively during Halo 2 and commentating during Halo 4.  We had the pleasure of having him cast during his US debut at the HCS Season One Grand Finals last month at Pax East 2015.  With competitive Halo making a firm comeback, we’re happy to have some overseas talent recognized and holding his own alongside veteran commentators.  We’re privileged to have the opportunity to talk with Simms about his competitive past, his ease into the commentator seat, his thoughts on the Halo Championship Series and what his Halo 5 caster/streamer wishes are.

As Benjamin Giraud digs deeper into John’s past, the more the truth breaks into the fabricated story laid out by ONI and the UNSC.  What was supposed to be an easy assignment now has Ben questioning everything he’s learned about John’s past.  As he so eloquently puts it in his latest episode, “Do glassed people have bad records?”  Riding on the edges of any leads he can get to invalidate Ellie’s stories of John as a kid and the facts at play about his family and Elysium City, Ben takes huge risks going outside approved interviews, relying on his own sources.  One ONI plant finally snaps under the pressure from Ben, but having the conversation take place over Waypoint could have jeopardized his investigation.