Double PS Plus for Couch Co-Op? Halo Says Never Mind

For about 24 hours, the official word from Halo Studios was that playing Halo: Campaign Evolved in split-screen co-op on PS5 would require both players to hold active PlayStation Plus subscriptions. Not for online play. For local, same-couch, two-controllers-one-TV co-op. The kind of co-op that has defined Halo since 2001.

The requirement appeared in a community Q&An on Halo Waypoint published on June 19, written by senior community manager John Junyszek. The post laid out platform-specific co-op requirements and, for PS5, stated plainly: "both accounts will need to have PlayStation Plus and be linked to a Microsoft account." Xbox players, by contrast, only needed a second Microsoft account for local split-screen. No Game Pass required unless you wanted online co-op. The asymmetry was glaring.

Fans noticed immediately. The game preservation account Does It Play called it "forced DOUBLE ONLINE DRM even for couch co-op." One commenter on Bluesky pointed out that Nintendo lets you pop Joy-Cons off a Switch and be playing local multiplayer in seconds, while Halo was asking for two paid subscriptions for the same privilege. Reddit threads filled with players cancelling PS5 pre-orders and debating whether Sony or Microsoft was responsible for the policy.

Then Came the Correction

On June 21, Halo Studios updated the Waypoint post and posted on X: "We incorrectly stated that PlayStation Plus is required for local co-op splitscreen play. Local splitscreen co-op requires a PlayStation account for each player but does not require a PlayStation Plus account." The corrected version now confirms that only online co-op requires PS Plus, which is standard for virtually every PS5 game.

So it was a mistake. A typo, essentially, in an official FAQ that went live and sat uncorrected for roughly a day while the internet caught fire over it. I'm glad the actual policy is reasonable, but the original wording was so specific makes it a strange error. This wasn't a vague sentence that could be misread. The post explicitly said "both accounts will need to have PlayStation Plus" and then separately noted that "having these active PlayStation Plus subscriptions will also provide access to online co-op play." That reads like someone describing a deliberate policy, not someone making a clerical mistake.

Maybe it was just bad copy that slipped through review. But the speed and intensity of the backlash probably didn't hurt in prompting a quick correction. Either way, the episode highlights how little trust players have left when it comes to subscription requirements and account-linking barriers. The reaction wasn't disproportionate; it was proportionate to years of publishers slowly normalising paywalls around features that used to be free. When a company says "you need two subscriptions to play offline co-op," people believe it instantly because it sounds exactly like would happen in 2026.

Both PS5 players will still need individual PlayStation accounts and linked Microsoft accounts to play local co-op, which is more friction than Xbox players face but at least doesn't cost anything extra. Halo: Campaign Evolved launches on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Game Pass on July 28.