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In the beta release of Halo 3 multiplayer mode, if you angle the camera just right while on a mongoose, you can clip through the Spartan's helmet and it'll show a face underneath. Which is the image of Marcus Lehto, Bungie's creative director from 1997 to 2012.
Months before release, Bungie opened a public multiplayer beta to anyone who bought Crackdown. It wasn't just a marketing gimmick, in the space of three weeks the beta pulled in more than 800,000 unique players, effectively turning early access into one of the biggest live playtests in gaming history up to that point.
Halo 3's viral marketing kicked off in a strange way: on June 11, 2007, Bungie.net's forums appeared to be 'hacked,' setting off months of clue-hunting as fans pieced together hidden servers that gradually revealed the final days of the Forerunners. The campaign, known as Iris, folded story lore directly into the game's real-world promotion.
When Halo 3 launched on September 25, 2007, it didn't just break gaming records, it outsold the opening weekends of major Hollywood films. Reports at the time put day-one earnings north of $170 million, with roughly 3.3 million copies sold in the first week alone, edging past openings like Spider-Man 3 and the release of the final Harry Potter novel.
