The developer of Splitgate wants to make first-person shooters “great” again, but is upsetting shooter fans with its new announcement.
Who is it about? The development studio 1047 Games had a surprise hit on Steam with Splitgate in 2019, but already in September 2022, work on the arena shooter was stopped. Last year, the studio announced Splitgate 2.
During the Summer Game Fest 2025, Ian Proulx, the CEO and co-founder of 1047 Games, was on stage at the live event. He had an important announcement to make.
His stage appearance was not just about the announcement. He started by expressing the profound thoughts of many shooter fans and ended with an announcement about Splitgate 2, which for many players means the exact opposite.
“Make FPS great again”
What did the developer say: In the shooter community, there are some thoughts and wishes that have been bubbling up for years among various players, including the wish that Respawn and EA would finally announce Titanfall 3.
Ian Proulx addresses these thoughts in his speech and presents himself wearing a hat that says: “Make FPS great again.” He briefly shoots at Activision and Call of Duty.
Everything started so well, but the last sentence of the speech made the previous words completely superfluous and ineffective for many shooter fans. You’d better read for yourselves:
When we started with Splitgate in our dormitory, we just wanted to develop a game that we could play with our friends, and 20 million of you played with us. Now, with the help of our great community, we have developed Splitgate 2. Why? Because I grew up with Halo and I am tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year, and I wish we had Titanfall 3. With Splitgate 2, we asked ourselves how we could take portals to the next level. What if you could travel through portals to entirely different worlds? So we combined the action and movement of arena shooters with the scale and intensity of something much bigger. Splitgate Battle Royale launches now free-to-play.
So Splitgate 2 launched on the night of June 7 as a free-to-play title for Steam, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and in the Epic Games Store – with a new battle royale mode in tow. The classic arena mode is also included and is expected to receive updates in the future.
“You can keep your Temu-Apex”
This is how the community reacts: The announcement was not well received in the shooter community – especially after the big claims and the “Make FPS great again” hat. On Steam, the game received around 3,000 negative reviews. Players write there:
- “The launch was the worst thing that has happened to the game so far. What were they thinking with this battle royale nonsense after preaching that they wanted to bring back arena shooters? That silly hat didn’t help either. The cash shop reeks of ‘Spectre: Divide’ level ridiculousness.”
- “Bro wears a ‘Make FPS great again’ hat and makes the most expensive store I’ve ever seen, and releases an unfinished battle royale.”
- “‘Make FPS great again’, and then they release a battle royale mode and call a mode ‘OG Splitgate’. Yeah, you can keep your Temu-Apex.”
- “Unfortunately, 1047 decided to chase trends and develop another battle royale instead of doing something new. […] There’s nothing ‘OG’ about this, it’s the usual modern game-as-lazy-service nonsense.”
- “Making a joke on stage about the state of the FPS genre and then immediately releasing another battle royale mode and adding a $70 cosmetic package to the game is one of the worst PR moves I can imagine for such a small studio.”
The criticism of the shop is based on the high prices for cosmetic content. Already, there is a package that costs around 70 euros. The package is currently discounted and usually costs around 115 euros. For that price, players get 4 weapon skins, one portal skin, and one character.
This is what MeinMMO’s shooter nerd Dariusz thinks: The criticism is not unexpected, as the idea of “combining the action and movement of arena shooters with the scale and intensity of something much bigger” is nothing new. It is exactly what Call of Duty: Warzone and Apex Legends did 5-6 years ago. That Ian Proulx says on stage that he wants to play Titanfall 3 and then develops an “Apex Legends with portals” seems absurd. One knows that Apex Legends is, in a way, the successor to Titanfall 2 and takes place in the same universe, but as a battle royale, it is a completely different game than Titanfall and does not fulfill the fans’ wish.
At the Summer Game Fest 2025, a new MMO shooter called “The Cube” was also announced, set in the universe of the single-player game “Atomic Heart” released in 2023. You can read more about it on MeinMMO: A new MMO shooter presents itself with a colorful world and one of the best features from The First Descendant
