I used to play Halo2 all the time.... as soon as people were "modding" there machines I quit. It wasn't much fun, unless you had friends playing with you.
The stand-by thing does work but very annoying to other people. If I was playing and people started doing that, I just left the game and tried another match. It's not worth it.
And sometimes playing the ranked matches weeded out the modders, but not always.