[Console Games] Splitgate 2 - free-to-play first-person shooter

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Splitgate 2 is a first-person shooter. Players can place portals between two points on a map, and they can fire weapons or travel through those portals. The game features several gameplay modes. In addition to the round-based team deathmatch mode,[1] the game introduces Hot Zone, a mode similar to King of the Hill. In Hot Zone, respawn time gradually increases as a match progresses, though successful eliminations will lower the respawn time.[2] Splitgate 2 also has a 60-player battle royale mode.[3] and a map creator named the Lab.[4]

The game has three factions of characters, with each having their own unique gameplay mechanics. The faction "Aeros" is fast and agile for players who prefer fast-paced gameplay; Meridian is a support-focused faction that can heal allies, detect enemy location, and track an enemy's health level; Sabrask focuses mainly on using defensive strategies rather than using portals, and players can place "smart walls" that block enemy attacks.[5]

Development
In September 2022, 1047 Games announced that they have ended the development of Splitgate to work on a new, free-to-play game set in the same universe.[6] While the first game was created by about 15 people, Splitgate 2 was created by a team of more than 200 people.[4] While the original Splitgate started as a student game, Splitgate 2 was considered by Ian Proulx, the creative director, as a triple-A product. He cited hero shooters, Call of Duty, and Halo as the game's main sources of inspiration, and compared the game to Valorant, in which a player's success in combat is governed by their "ability to shoot and portal and have good positioning" rather than the use of active abilities. Maps in Splitgate 2 were designed to be more symmetrical and less vertical, with greater similarities to maps from multiplayer games like Call of Duty than to those of arena shooters.[2] The game is developed using Unreal Engine 5.[7]

1047 Games announced Splitgate 2 in July 2024.[8] An open beta including 25 weapons, 15 maps and 10 modes was released on May 22, 2025.[9] The game was released in full on June 6, 2025, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.[10] Splitgate 2 was designed to be a live service game, with 1047 planning to add and rotate content regularly.[11]

Controversies
At the 2025 Summer Game Fest on June 6, 2025, a trailer presentation from Proulx received negative reception from both video game journalists and fans when he appeared on the stage wearing a "Make FPS Great Again" hat, while criticizing other FPS games like Halo and Call of Duty.[12] He said it was not a political statement, although PCGamesN described it as "tone-deaf" regardless of whether it was. An additional controversy emerged over the game's expensive launch microtransactions, such as a "Nano Swarm" bundle that cost US$70 even at a 45% discount. Players also accused the developers of hypocrisy for including a battle royale mode, commonly seen in the Call of Duty series. Proulx responded to the backlash by announcing the price of the bundle and other microtransactions in the game's store would be halved, as well as stating that he believed the development team had innovated sufficiently to not be "[chasing] a trend" by including battle royale.[13]

On July 22, 2025, 1047 Studios release a statement apologizing for the state of the game's release and announced that Splitgate 2 would be "going back to beta", with minimal updates until 2026 in order to focus on reworking various aspects of the game with improved playtesting. The studio also announced staff layoffs and that the original Splitgate's servers would be taken offline due to a lack of funds to keep the game operational.[14]

Splitgate 2 is a free-to-play first-person shooter developed and published by 1047 Games. A successor to Splitgate (2019), it was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S in June 2025.

 

Splitgate (known during development under the working title Splitgate: Arena Warfare and originally known as Wormhole Wars) was a free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed and published by 1047 Games. It was released in early access on May 24, 2019, for Linux and Microsoft Windows on Steam, and on Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 on July 27, 2021. A PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S version came in 2022. On August 25, 2021, the developers announced that the game would stay in beta indefinitely and at the same time released Season 0. The game revolves around Halo-inspired sci-fi combat in battle arenas where players can create wormhole portals between two points on the map that have been compared to those of the Portal series, and fire weapons or travel through those portals.

A sequel, Splitgate 2, was released on June 6, 2025.

Development
The game was developed by Nevada-based 1047 Games. Its founders, Ian Proulx and Nicholas Bagamian started working on the game as a school project while they were attending Stanford University studying computer science. Proulx was inspired by Portal and Portal 2, and believed that its mechanic could translate well into other video game genres. They worked on the game without funding for six months, and then released a demo for user testing, which became unexpectedly po[CENSORED]r as the game drew 600,000 downloads in its first month of release. The game design philosophy was described to be similar to that of Fortnite and Rocket League, in which the game is "easy to learn" but "difficult to master".[1]

The game was released as a free-to-play title on Steam on May 24, 2019. 1047 Games continued to work on the game post-release and had raised a total of $10 million for the project by May 2021 from investors.[2] In June 2021, the company announced that the game would be coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S with cross-platform play supported.[3]

While Splitgate struggled to maintain a viable player base after its initial early access launch in 2019, the game saw a significant surge of players when the game's beta launched in early July 2021, causing it to surpass 600,000 downloads in the first week.[4][5] Its sudden po[CENSORED]rity was unexpected by the developers and led to the game going offline several times to fix server issues.[4] This led to the postponement of its departure from early access while the developers attempted to increase server capacity to handle well over 100,000 concurrent players.[6] Despite attempts at increasing server capacity, a queue system was implemented to limit the number of players logging onto the game. Developers posted updates on the server's status on their Twitter accounts until the system was removed in August 2021. On July 22, 2025, the official Splitgate X account has announced that they will be shutting down Splitgate in the next month, so they can continue supporting Splitgate 2.

Splitgate received an aggregate score of 68/100 on Metacritic.[11] Samuel Horti of IGN said that while the game is an "average arena FPS", the "clever twist" of being able to place portals turns it into a "smart, tactical team-based shooter". However, he criticized the game's "bland" maps and its low player count, which made it difficult to create balanced matches.[12] Alex Santa Maria of Game Revolution called the gameplay "impressively solid" but saying it needed "a bit more visual flair" and comparing the game's armor designs to "forgotten also-rans like Section 8".[10] Aiman Maulana of the New Straits Times rated the game 7/10, calling the gameplay variety "decent", but saying it needed more content and maps.[13]

Polygon included Splitgate under their list of what they considered to be the "best games of 2021."[14]

 

 

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitgate_2