The sequel to the breakout FPS is stepping out of the shadows

In a time when new multiplayer shootersregularly try and fail to escape the shadows of Call of Duty, Fortnite and Apex Legends, the story of Splitgate and its creators at 1047 Games defies all logic. There were several moments when the ‘Halo with portals’ arena shooter almost sank after failing to find a steady audience after its Steam launch in 2019.

It was a minor miracle when Splitgate reemerged with console ports in 2021 and became the hottest free-to-play game of that summer, exploding to a peak of 200,000 concurrent players and briefly making a traditional arena shooter one of the most-played games in the world.

But what’s most surprising to me is what happened after the team of around 20 at 1047 Games, who’d spent months putting out fires caused by Splitgate’s unexpected popularity, couldn’t keep up with the content demands of its players. The game’s five minutes of fame had expired, player numbers were way down, but 1047 didn’t plug away at updates in the hopes of luring people back, or call it quits.

Instead, it got the opportunity to do what so few studios in the live service biz ever get to do: put the old Splitgateon a shelf, and start making a sequel.

THREE CLASSES WITH UNIQUE POOLS OF WEAPONS AND GEAR THAT CAN BE CUSTOMISED

FRESH START

“We felt like we had a really good feel of what’s missing from [Splitgate 1]. And I think we only had two things that we were actually happy with,” Ian Proulx, 1047 Games CEO and creative director, tells me in the office of his Lake Tahoe waterfront home in Nevada. “We thought we had great gunplay and we really like the portal mechanic. Everything else about the game, we just did sort of good enough.”

This time six years ago, Proulx and co-founder Nicholas Bagamian were grinding away at Splitgatefrom Proulx’s parents’ house with a lean, remote crew of 15. In 2024, 1047 is still remote, but has steadily grown to over 160. That number took me by surprise—in the year and a half since 1047 went behind the curtain to start on Splitgate 2, the small studio with a student game that punched above its weight has quietly become a landing pad for veteran FPS talent from Infinity Ward, Ubisoft, 343 Industries, and more.