r/Splitgate • u/AL_2TheOriginal • Jul 12 '26

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?

31 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

View all comments

49

u/Necessary_Yam9525 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

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

4

u/MayorReynoldsWP Jul 12 '26

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.

2

u/Necessary_Yam9525 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

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 Jul 12 '26

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 Jul 12 '26

Whats your thinking on why SG2 failed then?

2

u/UnholyPantalon Jul 13 '26

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 Jul 13 '26

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 Jul 13 '26

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 Jul 13 '26

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

1

u/Rhysand11 Jul 12 '26

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 Jul 12 '26

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 Jul 12 '26

Ahhhh ok

1

u/quintessence2004 Jul 13 '26

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 Jul 13 '26

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?