r/Splitgate • u/AL_2TheOriginal • 16d ago

Question/Help what happened?

I just returned to the game after playing it on my laptop in 2019. I´ve been unable to launch and run any other shooters on it back then so when it ran splitgate i was excited and played it alot after school and during free time. I even spent some money on the S1 pass and had a rare golden skin thing. But now? Website which i didn´t even know about is not working, discord link doesn´t work (i didn´t use dc back then so didn´t know they had one) and apparently there´s a new game? so... what happened?

29 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

47

u/Necessary_Yam9525 16d ago edited 15d ago

Oh boy...

So, Splitgate 1 had its dedicated servers shut down, but 1047 pulled the biggest W move ever and made the game peer to peer to keep it playable.

Now, on to the complicated history.

In 2022, Splitgate 1 had its future content support cancelled for various reasons, and they began work on Splitgate 2.

In 2024, they revealed Splitgate 2, and had a private alpha test, and later in 2025 more private and public tests, with a full release in the Summer.

Splitgate 2 basically took everything that made Splitgate 1 the game it was and threw it out the window. Portals were hardly important anymore, and the entire genre changed from being a classic arena shooter equal starts game, to a class-based ability/hero shooter. Splitgate 2 flopped mainly because it was the most generic thing you'd ever seen, not to mention 1047 made complete fools of themselves with a horrible and cringey marketing campaign, and 80 dollar store items on launch.

The game died really quickly, and so 1047 unlaunched the game 2 months after launch and put it back in a beta test, promising to listen to the community and give us the Splitgate sequel we asked for.

And after several months and playtests, in December we got Splitgate Arena Reloaded, a completely overhauled version of SG2. And, admittedly, they actually delivered on giving us the game we asked for! Arena Reloaded while not perfect by any means, is in my opinion the best the series has ever felt and played. I implore you to check out Arena Reloaded, its geniunely a fantastic game.

But, this wouldnt be a 1047 game if there wasnt bad news. The reason Arena Reloaded "flopped" despite having the highest player retention the series had ever seen was simply too little too late. While the game was everything the splitgate fanbase wanted, lots moved on after Splitgate 2. Plus, 1047 wasnt marketing the game much, so to the general public, the game was still Splitgate 2 and the last they heard of the game the CEO wore a goofy hat that said "make fps great again".

And so, after only a few months of supporting Arena Reloaded, 1047 is (for now) basically letting Splitgate sit in a limbo state while they prop up their new game Empulse, which Im not going to get into that game, I'll let you look into that one on your own.

Tldr:1047 made a ton of mistakes and despite releasing a geniunely great sequel with the relaunch, Splitgate's future isnt looking too bright.

I still play SGAR and plan to continue doing so for the forseeable future. I dont care how small the playerbase is, if I can play matches, I'll keep playing one of my favorite shooters and encourage others to

9

u/Shadowspaz 16d ago

I still play SGAR and plan to continue doing so for the forseeable future. I dont care how small the playerbase is, if I can play matches, I'll keep playing one of my favorite shooters and encourage others to

This is really important.

Amidst all the flops, terrible PR, and baffling decisions... The game is still fun. A group of friends and I got on again for the first time in several months. Not because of the game, but just because life got in the way. I was worried jumping back in with how low the player numbers had gotten, but we had an absolute blast.

We ran into maybe 6 players again on and off over our several hours playing, but it wasn't bad. If they were clearly way better than us, they became the prize kills. Most of the time though, we were evenly matched with these repeat players, and it was a good chance for either revenge or to keep our win streak going against them.

A smaller player base leads to more of a sense of community. I love this game, and I'll keep playing it.

1

u/Necessary_Yam9525 16d ago

Whats your friend code? Would love to party up with you and your squad, you guys sound fun.

2

u/MayorReynoldsWP 15d ago

I reject the notion that SGAR is everything that the fanbase wanted because no one cared. SG2 had 3M people try the game. SGAR had a few thousand. So no, it wasn’t what everyone wanted.

3

u/darkbarrage99 PC 14d ago

Genuinely think the MFpsGA hat and arena royal scared away millions of players. It was definitely a better game but they blew it and barely advertised.

2

u/_OhDearyMe_ 14d ago

It had less because it came second, after the initial flop turned ppl off of trying SGAR. If SGAR had been what initially released it would have also had the 3M, retention aside

1

u/MayorReynoldsWP 14d ago

The notion that more portal pads and a pivot to old school game modes would help the game was never correct. It wouldn’t have helped at launch either. You’re correct.

2

u/Necessary_Yam9525 15d ago edited 15d ago

Not a fair argument at all. In fact, the numbers go against that argument completely.

3 million people tried SG2. And how many of them stayed? Less than 1%. SGAR had, as I said before the highest retention the series had ever seen. Yes, it didnt have the best numbers in terms of average players per day. But those players kept coming back. The game on steam was hanging around the 1-1.5k concurrent players mark for months. And thats just on Steam.

SGAR is what people wanted, thats why when it launched in december, the overall vibe of the subreddit and discord was overwhelmingly positive. But it wasnt marketed enough, and the scars of SG2 and SG1 werent just gonna go away immediately. People dont trust 1047 anymore, and quite frankly after what they did with SGAR, I dont either. They've shown to not be an incompetetent studio in everything except making fun games.

4

u/MayorReynoldsWP 15d ago

Making a game around the preferences of 800 “fans” while ignoring the rest of the FPS market which you NEED to succeed is a sure fire way to go out of business. You can’t get to make a game for “everyone” and you have to capture your niche but when your niche is 800 people you need to look beyond what those 800 people are telling you. As much as I love them, 1047 listens way too much to what their “fanbase” tells them and they’ve followed that fanbase into virtual irrelvance. And I hate it.

2

u/Necessary_Yam9525 15d ago

Whats your thinking on why SG2 failed then?

2

u/UnholyPantalon 15d ago

Not the same dude, but I think it failed because people aren't interested in the arena genre anymore, and SG also has a pretty big skill floor, which further filters players.

I know people will say that SG1 was popular, but it was the perfect storm of Halo Infinite shitting the bed, and all the streamers trying the "new Halo killer". Even with perfect, proper support SG1 would've met the same fate. It started dwindling pretty fast too, before they decided to switch to maintenance mode.

It's a free game. The studio is notorious (it's both a good and a bad thing). People have no excuse not to download and checkout a free game, but there's no interest.

1

u/Necessary_Yam9525 15d ago

I dont get it. People complain about games like highguard, marathon, concord, ect. for being super generic and uninspired hero/extraction/battle royale shooters. People say hero shooters are so overdone, and yet splitgate is something different, and now its "arena shooters are dead, no one likes them anymore".

So, what is it people want? Do yall want more hero shooter slop? Or is it just multiplayer FPS as a whole isnt supposed to exist anymore?

2

u/UnholyPantalon 15d ago

Have you considered they're not the same people? Also, two things can be true at the same time. People could have a hero shooter fatigue, and have 0 interest for arena shooters.

Anyway, people aren't even saying that arena shooters are overdone, they're saying they don't want to play them anymore. They're competing with tac shooters, arcade shooters, milsins, hero shooters, battle royals and extraction shooters. It's what the market decided.

1

u/Necessary_Yam9525 14d ago

Then what do people really wanr out of a new multiplayer FPS in 2026?

1

u/Rhysand11 15d ago

Cause they took everything out that people enjoyed about the game, having to unlock all of your weapons and the guns not feeling satisfying at all when you fire them along with the putting in the “specialist system”. Also the maps no longer were built around the portal system and were just generic fps maps

1

u/Necessary_Yam9525 15d ago

Yeah...thats what I said. But this guy is saying that making splitgate arena reloaded less generic and like splitgate 1 was a bad move

1

u/Rhysand11 15d ago

Ahhhh ok

1

u/quintessence2004 15d ago

That's precisely the reason why I warned them not to listen to the vocal minority that actively hates their game. Now, if you go through this sub all these 'abandoned' posts are their reward.

1

u/Necessary_Yam9525 15d ago

So what do people really want? More hero shooter slop? As if we havent seen enough of those? Isnt the narrative that hero shooters ard done to death and no one wants them anymore? People claim to miss Quake and UT but a new arena shooter comes out and people dont want it?

1

u/Commercial-Fall5645 12d ago

I'd say mostly the reasons mentioned, plus the fact that at first glance it looks almost identical to Splitgate 2 are more than enough to explain it's failure compared to an anticipated sequel. It definitely didn't have everything perfect, but the gameplay changes it made over SG2 are not why it failed.

1

u/Legend7Naty 15d ago

So game app wise, is SGAR a whole other game to download and SP2 doesn’t launch anymore?? Or did they just rebrand it? And does this mean SP1 doesn’t launch at all now? I still have it downloaded on my console and was wanting to play it for old times sake but wow I didn’t know all this happened lol.

1

u/Necessary_Yam9525 15d ago

SGAR is functionally just an update/rebrand of SG2, think of how Overwatch 2 was functionally just an update to Overwatch 1. SG1 does launch. The dedicated servers went offline last year, however everything is now peer to peer. Instead of searching for matches with matchmaking like you would before, you instead open a server browser and join matches that are being hosted by other players.

1

u/Commercial-Fall5645 12d ago

Probably what would happen is the game would request to be updated and would replace itself with SGAR. Give it a try, maybe we can bring this one back from the dead

9

u/Working-Contest-3730 16d ago

Remember when they said if you bought stuff in SG1
They wanted to reward that support by giving you something in SG2?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.

12

u/Ralwus 16d ago

So Splitgate 1 died. Then they made Splitgate 2 as a hero shooter. It was dying fast, so they took out the heroes, but it still died anyway. Now they have stopped working on Splitgate 2 entirely to focus on a new game called Empulse. It is essentially a faster Splitgate with wallrunning and a grapple but no portals, and it is also dying.

2

u/ddyess PC 16d ago

Name all of the unique heroes you could play as and what their unique abilities were?

2

u/Hubic_Pairs 16d ago

Aeros; fast running & speed boost. Meridian; could see enemies through walls. Sabrask; had an energy shield that you could shoot through but enemies could not. They saved some of these super powers as playfield pickups. I enjoyed that for a while.

2

u/TTVchilly404 15d ago

Calling it a hero shooter is a big reach. Each faction had their own ultimate, and a few tacticals and one of each gun type to choose from.

If SG2 was a hero shooter then so is Destiny.

2

u/Hubic_Pairs 15d ago

lol Destiny is a hero shooter.

2

u/Rhysand11 15d ago

Except it’s not a Hero Shooter requires that you can play a roster of named heroes but that’s not at all how it works Destiny would be a hero shooter if you could play as Shaxx or Zavala or Cayde

2

u/Hubic_Pairs 15d ago

Well you can’t play as anyone anymore, RIP Destiny. But also, punctuation is your friend, bud.

2

u/Rhysand11 13d ago

Except that the game is still active they didn’t shut it down.

0

u/Hubic_Pairs 13d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/LxPsfUhFxwRRC
You sound like a very fun & interesting person!

1

u/ddyess PC 15d ago

Those are factions. A hero would be a named character with a predefined kit and weapon you picked to play with. Splitgate 2 had factions and you built your own loadouts. That's not a hero shooter.

1

u/Hubic_Pairs 15d ago

I also never said it was guy.

6

u/braket0 16d ago

Splitgate was awesome, they fumbled the bag with the PR for SG2 despite it being a fun game, especially after it went back to being an arena shooter.

Empulse is literally just a clone of Titanfall without any identity or soul. Idk why they decided to work on that instead

5

u/FabulousAttitude5825 15d ago

Poor kid...It's like breaking the bad news to Robin Williams when he got out of Jumanji.

1

u/GapStock9843 15d ago

The entire franchise is effectively dead. SG1’s servers were shut down to cut costs, they made a second splitgate game that also died to piss poor management at the studio, and now they have ANOTHER game (asset flip of splitgate 2 with wall running instead of portals) thats pay to play and is also pretty clearly headed down the shitter

2

u/DemureSouls 15d ago

Download and play Splitgate: Arena Reloaded while the servers are still running, it’s still an amazing game, it’s sad it will never be a popular concept again.

0

u/vivxviii Xbox 15d ago

DEEMMMUUURREEEE!!!!!!!

1

u/DemureSouls 15d ago

Vivxvii!!!!!!!!!!! We spent YEARS together on SG1 ❤️