Ian Proulx had realistic hopes for Splitgate, the multiplayer shooter dubbed “Halo with Portals,” when he and his colleagues 1047 finally published the game in 2021. He hoped for gradual expansion and assumed it would do enough over time. Ten47 had less than twenty members at the time, including four engineers.
Proulx recalls, “But it was like, nope, this is your moment now, everything’s on fire.”
Splitgate’s success exceeded both Proulx’s expectations and the capabilities of its tiny independent staff. According to him, it peaked at almost two million daily active users. The team had to spend the following few months in “fire fighting mode” to maintain the game’s stability amidst the spike in demand.
Luckily for Proulx and 1047, the team’s finances were successful with Splitgate. Furthermore, because of the game’s excellent reaction, 1047 was able to raise an additional $100 million from investors. Initially, they had planned to use that money to construct and maintain Splitgate. However, via chat after conversation, Proulx and his colleagues discovered that the technical aspects of the game and the team’s composition required them to temper their objectives.
Finding your specialization and mastering a few skills are crucial for creating an independent game, according to Proulx. But since you lack the resources of a Call of Duty, you do have to make compromises. We therefore thought at the moment, “Wow, we are licking our lips.” We are thinking, there is no need to take such shortcuts. What if we had the chance to repeat everything?
That is precisely what 1047 decided to do. The group declared in 2022 that Splitgate would no longer be actively developed in favor of Splitgate 2.
Proulx says, “We know what Splitgate does well and where it falls short.” Additionally, we believed that creating one of the largest shooters in the world was our ultimate objective. We want to be in the game, taking on Fortnite, Apex, and Call of Duty. And we did not think that iterating on Splitgate would ever get us there.
A new trajectory
Splitgate 2 will launch on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox at some point in 2025, according to 1047’s official announcement today. A short cinematic video for the game showcases its tone and introduces the factions. Fans can now download the Splitgate 2 Companion App, which offers quizzes, collectible digital cards, activities, and a free digital comic series that expands the universe’s narrative. Additionally, 1047 intends to hold a community play test somewhere around Gamescom later this year.
According to Proulx, Splitgate 2 is essentially still Splitgate: it is still a first-person shooter with 4v4 combat that is free to play (Proulx assures me that there are only cosmetic microtransactions). Players still manipulate portals and physics to launch themselves or their adversaries at absurd angles and speeds in this shooter game.
He claims, “We are not killing each other to save humanity or to overcome evil.” It is an athletic endeavor. Thus, that can be seen in the folklore and the artwork. That was always my original intention—I wanted it to be a sport—and you saw a very tiny hint of it in Splitgate.
Proulx claims that the map design is the most obvious distinction between Splitgate 1 and 2, aside from the addition of factions. He informs me that he sort of fell into the role of map designer in Splitgate. But he brought in experts for Splitgate 2.
