On June 6, 2025, 1047 Games launched Splitgate 2. Now, less than two months later, the developer is about to “unlaunch” it. It’s also taking Splitgate 1 offline, and laying off 45 employees.
Today, 1047 revealed its plans to temporarily wind down support on the game it just released so the studio can go heads-down on what it says will be a complete overhaul of Splitgate 2. The game will remain playable during this time, and will still receive its promised Chapter 3 update and some bug fixes, but other than that, Splitgate 2 as we know it is done.
…That is, until early 2026, when the studio promises it will return with “big, sweeping changes.”
While all this sounds pretty dire, it might not come as a surprise to Splitgate 2 players. The game launched to middling reviews, was mired in controversy from the jump, and has since seen a steep drop-off in players and plenty of criticism and frustration from those who stuck around. At the time this piece was first drafted, a quick look at the main page of the Splitgate subreddit shows almost nothing but complaints about the game, memes about the game’s general state, and various threads and links to articles about the sinking player counts. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
When I spoke to CEO Ian Proulx last week, he referenced one particular Reddit thread entitled “If you’ve stopped playing tell me why” that is effectively a laundry list of player complaints. He says he and the 1047 team read each reply and catalogued them, scrutinizing what the most-cited issues were. He admits that Splitgate 2, as it launched, is “not a finished product yet.”
“This doesn’t feel like a launched game as much as we want to pretend it was, and obviously we said it was. It feels like a beta. There’s bugs still. There’s features that are missing that — obviously not every game has to have every feature — but there’s certain things that should be in a finished product. There’s too many bugs, and we’re hitting the reset button.”
To be clear, he doesn’t think Splitgate 2 is all bad. He’s most proud of the gameplay, the gunplay and movement. But Proulx admits that there are too many other issues, technical and structural, hindering players from enjoying the good that’s there.
“I think we’ve heard from the fans and from the gamers, they want something closer to Splitgate 1,” he says. “And so I think for us, this feels like a beta. It feels like a beta to me, it doesn’t feel like a launch. And I think we have to do a bit of a reset to actually listen to the fans, to the gamers, and address the feedback, fix the bugs, implement the features that should have been there on day one, but also make some big changes that the Splitgate community wants.”
What a Community Wants
What does the community want, then? A lot, Proulx says, but he boils it down to three major components. The first, he says, is demonstrated by that Reddit thread and summed up as “basic features.” Splitgate 2 needs a leaderboard. It needs better progression. There are a lot of seemingly little elements missing that add up to the game feeling unfinished.
Second, he says Splitgate 2 needs more portal walls and more opportunities for portals generally. 1047 already started adding more portal walls in the game’s alpha, but didn’t go far enough.
And third, Proulx thinks they need to make adjustments to game modes, though he isn’t quite sure what just yet.
“A big focus of ours is getting closer to just that classic arena game mode experience. I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, but I think we’ve done a lot of round-based modes, and we’ll still have some round-based modes, but players, they want to play the game and shoot stuff and have a good time and maybe play the objective.”
I ask Proulx if he intends to do anything to change the game’s current monetization model. Splitgate 2 is free-to-play, but its in-game storefront has been heavily criticized on a number of fronts. Players have said its season pass is confusing and gates too much content behind purchases, they’ve pointed out that the “discount” listings at launch were deceptive as to what items actually cost, and highlighted that awkward real-money-to-currency exchanges make it difficult to understand or accurately pay for just what you want, and nothing extra.
Splitgate 2 will remain free-to-play, Proulx says, and players will keep all the items they’ve already purchased. He’s not doing refunds, he says. But when the game comes back in 2026, he does want to “simplify” the monetization situation. When I ask for specifics, Proulx says he’s still thinking about it and will likely shift based on player feedback. But he’s currently considering a more basic battle pass, one you simply purchase once for a three-month period or so, and receive linear rewards from as you play more of the game.
Proulx isn’t fully certain right now of exactly what Splitgate 2 needs to be, and wants to let the community shape that decision. He tells me that, this time, 1047 will do regular playtests with the community on a separate branch of this game to collect feedback, similar to what the team did with Splitgate 1. “If they hate it, we can say…great, we’re not going to do that. Scrap it.”
I ask him if he has now, or ever has had, a strong vision for Splitgate 2 and the kind of game he wants to make. Does he think it possible the community could be wrong about what’s best for the game? Could his vision become compromised by player requests?
“If the community wants X, and that’s what they want, it doesn’t really matter what I want,” Proulx says. “But even what I want, I mean, I think a lot of what the community is asking for are things that I agree with. I think certain decisions we made early on, I think we almost got a little bit too scientific about it. Splitgate 1, there was no theory, there was no strategy. It was just, let’s go make a fun game because it’s cool…And I think with Splitgate 2…we kind of started with all these design goals, which is good, but I think we got a little bit too obsessive about, oh, let’s do this because it checks that box, as opposed to just like, well, is it fun? I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter what you theorize about if it’s not as fun.”
Try, Try Again
But how did Splitgate 2 end up here in the first place?
According to Proulx, the team was “too ambitious.” He says they tried to do too much with Splitgate 2, between the game’s arena mode, battle royale, and map creator, and ended up only getting each of those things done “80% instead of one or two things 100% of the way there.”
He also thinks another issue was that 1047 kept Splitgate 2 far too secretive for too long, out of a fear of leaks. Proulx mentions Apex Legends, which “shadow-dropped” seemingly out of nowhere to incredible success with no build-up at all, as an indicator that such a strategy can work well. But that’s also the opposite of what worked for Splitgate 1 – something Proulx suggests he should have learned from for the sequel.
Speaking of Splitgate 1, it’s not long for this world. As a part of this new doubling down on improving Splitgate 2, the first game’s servers will be shut down in about a month. 1047 says it’s “exploring the possibility of supporting offline or peer-to-peer matches,” and that it intends to include a “dedicated experience” in Splitgate 2 that “delivers on the promise of the original.” But in the short-term, Splitgate 1 will be no more.
Per 1047, this decision was made because it has cost the studio “hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past couple of years” to keep Splitgate 1 online. It’s cutting costs in other ways, too. Last month, the company laid off an unknown number of individuals. With today’s announcement, 45 more staff will be let go, 28% of the current total. “We definitely have to get our burn rate down,” Proulx says when I ask him about the company’s financial situation. “There’s no doubt about it. I’d say financially, thankfully, we are in a position where we can afford to do something like [the unlaunch] and take our time, but it’s going to take time. So we’re figuring that out.”
The cost-cutting measures do beg the question of both the veracity and, if the allegation is true, the wisdom of the company allegedly spending over $400,000 in influencer marketing ahead of Splitgate 2’s launch. This was according to an analysis posted on LinkedIn from Streamforge’s Nick Lombardi, using “estimates based on publicly available data and market rates from Streamforge’s algorithm.” The alleged influencer spend was reported on by a number of outlets, but Proulx responds when I ask him about it by saying that the article has “a lot of things that are factually incorrect.”
“There are definitely things in that article that are accurate,” he says. “But yeah, I’d say it’s, I don’t know, 60% accurate. Do I think that that strategy worked? I don’t know. I mean, I think that you have to do a little bit of everything. I think you have to have some influencers, you have to have some PR, you have to have some paid advertising. I can tell you certain ads ran more efficiently than others, but I think it’s all part of the same equation.”
Proulx goes on to say that influencer marketing is tricky – it’s hard to say just how many users a game actually acquires from a given influencer promoting a game, making it difficult to track success.
“But I also think you can’t buy yourself a successful launch,” he adds. “Splitgate 1’s budget was next to nothing, and it still had a really massively successful launch, and that was because we had built a lot of goodwill with the community… I think influencers and ads will add fuel to the fire, and if you have a really hype game with a passionate community that feels like they’re being listened to, then that will amplify. And if you don’t, then it’ll help a little bit.”
Proulx is essentially hoping to, in 2026, take a second crack at launching Splitgate 2. Aside from the issues with the game itself, its first launch last month was marred by other controversies. It started when Proulx wore a hat that read, “Make FPS Great Again” onstage at the game’s Summer Game Fest reveal, a reference to U.S. President Donald Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” hats. In a speech onstage at the same event, Proulx remarked that he’s “tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year,” which resulted in wide criticism from both developers and Call of Duty fans. And then, upon launch, a $145 microtransaction bundle was soundly rebuked by gamers for its predatory similarities to the very games Proulx and 1047 claimed to be pushing back against with Splitgate 2.
Proulx has since apologized for all of the above controversies, and actively revoked the high-priced microtransactions. But now, with a second crack at releasing Splitgate 2 on the horizon, I ask Proulx if there’s anything he intends to do differently, and if he thinks these issues meaningfully impacted the initial Splitgate 2 launch.
“Yes, I definitely would’ve done things differently,” he says. “I will say I think we would be in the position we’re in regardless of any of that stuff. Obviously, I don’t think that stuff helped us, and I don’t plan on doing any more stunts like that, but I think the reality is if this was a 10 out of 10 game, people would still be playing it and happily spending money and grinding and telling their friends, and that’s my feeling. And so I think the past is the past, and we’ve made a lot of mistakes. Not just that we’ve made many mistakes over the last 10 or however many years it’s been, and we keep learning and we iterate and we improve, and that’s what we’re going to keep doing.”
Once Chapter 3 is out, Splitgate 2 will officially go quiet until early next year while the team rebuilds. That team will be smaller than before, with a number of friends and colleagues having lost their jobs through no fault of their own. 1047 won’t be spending money on Splitgate 1 servers, but it also likely won’t be making much off microtransactions, making funding a more serious question. Some fans, inevitably, will not stick around to see if Splitgate 2 is a comeback story. Others remain permanently put off by the game’s launch controversies. It’s not exactly a cheery period for 1047 Games, but in Proulx’s eyes, the studio has been through worse. “We had much darker days” during Splitgate 1 development, he says. “A lot of almost quitting, a lot of tears… So it’s a tough road ahead. Of course it is, right? This is not an easy industry.”
But he’s adamant that, regardless, he isn’t giving up on Splitgate.
“It’s brutal, but we’re not going away. We’re not quitting. We absolutely love this. We love every single part about it, the good and the bad. And we’ve been here before and we’ve come out the other end, and we’re going to just keep doing what we can to stay alive.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
