Splitgate 2 threatens us with a December release

Splitgate 2 is coming back against my will.

Remember when Splitgate 2 tried to be the next big competitive FPS, but 1047 Games’ CEO Ian Proulx decided to bash other games and reference the Cheeto in Charge as part of his marketing campaign?

Well, if you’ve blocked that cringe moment from your mind, let me remind you: it essentially resulted in the game being returned to beta after just two months and a number of people being fired. At this point, it looked like the game was basically as dead as Trump’s ability to form coherent sentences due to the game being just as incompetent.

However, Splitgate 2 surprised the esports community this morning by announcing an early return, leaving us wondering if we should implement a new term limit.

Gamers not feeling positive about Splitgate 2 early launch

1047 Games has just threatened that Splitgate 2’s beta servers will go offline on December 4th, followed by a full re-release of the game later in the month. Fans are excited after seeing progress in the beta, but the general gaming public is shocked. And not in a good way.

“Dead before it launches,” one guy wrote. “At its core, it’s a boring multiplayer experience that looks bland, lacks depth and progression, weapons don’t have any wow factor, and portals aren’t even a band-aid anymore.”

Added another: “I cannot fathom the decision-making required to launch this game, fail, launch it again, fail even quicker, and then release this trailer, which looks like the most generic, soulless UE5 slop I’ve ever seen. Concord level shit going on here.”

Can’t wait!

1047 Games is hoping some of its changes will redeem Splitgate 2 after its initially bad reception. While it initially planned to be “heads down” until 2026, it looks like the changes have been implemented sooner than expected. This includes the removal of factions, abilities being changed to power-ups, and the return of classic game modes. There’s also new maps, new weapons, and a few other changes based on gamer feedback.

But perhaps the biggest change: not creating “hype” ahead of the relaunch.

There will be no hats ahead of Splitgate 2 launch

In June 2025, Proulx showed up at the Summer Game Fest wearing a “MAKE FPS GREAT AGAIN” hat and annoying everyone by insulting other games on stage. This was apparently the marketing strategy to get gamers to play Splitgate 2’s battle royale mode.

“I grew up playing Halo, and I’m tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year. And I wish we could have Titanfall 3,” he whined. “With Splitgate 2, we asked ourselves how we can take portals to the next level.

“What if you could portal to entirely different worlds? So we combined the action, movement, and gunplay of arena shooters with the scale and intensity of something much bigger. Splitgate battle royale launches free right now, and it’s fucking awesome.”

So awesome, in fact, that the game was forced to revert to beta and fire a bunch of employees the next month.

This tactic of forcing Splitgate 2’s stupid gimmicks into our faces apparently didn’t work as the team had thought. So this time, don’t expect any hats or claims or theatrics. Instead, Proulx has a new vision: don’t promote the game at all.

Sounds promising!

“We aren’t trying to build massive hype going into relaunch,” he wrote on Reddit. “We just want to put out a great game (which I firmly believe we now have) and then grow it over time. Splitgate 1’s relaunch had only a few hundred CCU on day one and grew very organically because it was fun.

“We have some marketing stuff lined up, of course, but the goal is to grow over time, not aim for a massive splash on day one.”

Did we forget that Splitgate 1 did well because it was a good game, not because it was under-marketed? Splitgate 2 suffered because the launch was horrendous, the game wasn’t enjoyable to those who liked the first one, Proulx is obnoxious, and it had an all-time peak player count of only 25,000, which dropped to 5,000 almost instantly. Guess those 5,000 players are still waiting for the re-launch.

Either way, don’t expect Proulx at the Game Awards 2025.