Splitgate 2: A Sequel Born from Community Input

When the first Splitgate , a free-to-play multiplayer FPS that combines the gunplay of Halo with the portals of, well, Portal , released on PC in 2019 , it flew largely under the radar. However, its fortunes changed after a port to consoles in 2021, which propelled the game to viral status. Within less than 30 days, Splitgate amassed an impressive 10 million downloads , with players flocking to its unique blend of fast-paced shooting and strategic portal mechanics. But with that success came some unexpected growing pains—players often had to endure wait times of up to 90 minutes just to get into a match.

Rather than simply scaling up server capacity to accommodate its newfound player base, indie studio 1047 Games made a bold decision in late 2022: they chose to dramatically scale up their vision and start from scratch with a sequel. Enter Splitgate 2 , a “revolutionary step forward for competitive shooters,” which was officially announced in July 2024. A month after the reveal, my colleague Zubi Khan got hands-on with an early alpha build and lauded the game as “a worthy sequel” in his preview .

At gamescom 2024 , I had the opportunity to sit down with Ian Proulx, the co-founder and CEO of 1047 Games, to dive deeper into the jump from Splitgate to its significantly more ambitious sequel. We discussed what he and his team were aiming for during the Splitgate 2 closed alpha , which ran on Steam from August 21 to August 25, and explored the challenges and exciting prospects of reinventing a game that had already captured the imagination of so many players. Here’s what Proulx had to say:

What is something you’ve learned from making the first Splitgate that is now helping in the development of Splitgate 2 ?

Ian Proulx : I’d say that the biggest thing is the importance of live ops. With the first Splitgate , we had our moment and the game was super fun, but we just didn’t have the infrastructure needed to sustain it. This time around, people are going to see that we’ve really done an amazing job at thinking through our live ops plan and our content cadence. I think people are going to be delighted to see how much there is to do and with how many things are coming.

What were some of the things that you and the team were keeping an eye out for during the closed alpha for the game?

Ian Proulx : The biggest thing is just getting initial reactions from the community, which, so far, have been overwhelmingly positive. So we’re really happy to see that. There was also a lot of positivity from the press and from content creators, so that’s been awesome to see as well. But also, you know, of course, we’re looking at the good, the bad and the ugly. I think balance is definitely something we’re keeping a close eye on.

We’re starting to see some trends already, which has been really helpful…we’ll definitely be making balance adjustments. Plus, we’re already starting to get some ideas on how to improve a couple of the game modes. It’s still very early, but this stuff is super, super useful to us so we definitely love hearing what the community has to say.

Is there a roadmap planned for Splitgate 2 ? Will players have access to, for example, more abilities or even more factions in the future?

Ian Proulx : What I’ll say is that we’ve kind of thought about multiple paths that we could take. We don’t have a predefined road map…maybe it’s more factions in the future, maybe it’s more guns for the factions, maybe it’s sub-factions or maybe none of the above will see any changes because we’d rather focus on maps. The great thing about 1047 Games is that we’re community-first and very nimble and so, we’ve designed Splitgate 2 in a way that we have the resources to do any combination of these things, as they’re all viable options, but really, we’re going to keep an eye on what the community wants and respond to that.

So, if they want more factions, that’s probably what they’re going to get. If they want to keep just the three factions, we’ve designed the game in a way that that’s all they’d need. We don’t want things to get bloated and we don’t want to have a game where two or five years from now, Splitgate 2 is overwhelming due to all the different ways to play. So, maybe we just focus on game modes and maps.

If that’s the case, how do you gauge community feedback? How do you decide what feedback to act on?

Ian Proulx : There’s no perfect answer – you just have to balance everything. For one, I’m very active on Discord and I’m listening and interacting with the community and hearing from them personally. This is anecdotal, but I think that kind of stuff is very important. We also have data, so we can see, statistically, what faction is the most popular and what map is the most popular. All of these are things that we’re tracking. And then, we’ve got some tools to gauge community sentiment and summaries which give us a rough idea of what people are saying.

So, I think you have to take everything into account: you have to listen to what the loud people are saying, what the data is saying and what the summary is saying. Ultimately, you gotta balance it all. It’s very rare that all three of these methods I’ve mentioned tell you the obvious thing…if that were the case, game development would be very easy.

You have to balance all of it and ultimately trust your gut. And that’s what I try to do: I listen to the community, I look at the data, I trust my gut and try to make the best decisions. And then you should be quick to respond. If you make a bad decision, you’re going to hear about it, you’re going to see it in the data and, then, maybe you will readjust.

You just mentioned that you might be focusing solely on maps – what’s the core philosophy behind map design? How do you and the team get started with making a map for Splitgate 2 ?

Ian Proulx : The way we got started with map design in general on Splitgate 2 is by looking at Splitgate 1 and trying to identify the maps that people really like and why they like them. From there, we built our core-level design pillars around that. So, some of the things that we noticed is that people really like the maps “Stadium” and “Abyss”.

So, you’ll notice that a lot of maps in Splitgate 2 are smaller. We also have big maps coming, of course, but for the first showing of the game, we definitely included maps inspired by those two. The other thing that we saw is how portal placement works. There are a lot of really fun triple portal routes on maps like “Stadium” and “Abyss,” and there are not a lot of camping locations.

One of the things that people didn’t like in Splitgate 1 is that, in maps like “Oasis”, you’ve got a very high up portal wall that overlooks the entire map. That’s fun for a few minutes, but then it starts to become very trolly and very campy. We don’t really like that camping play style because we want people moving and playing more dynamically.

And so, you’ll notice that we don’t have a ton of those crazy sight lines. We put a lot more thought and consideration into every portal this time around…we want you to be able to have these triple portal routes, move fast and have awesome flanks, but we don’t want you to just stand behind a portal camping the whole game.

So, that was a big part of it. I think spawn camping was another thing that we’d see in some of the maps from the first Splitgate because you could literally portal from one base, and in a split second, you’re in the enemy team’s base. And so, you’ll notice, in Splitgate 2, that you can get to the other team’s base, but it’s going to take a few portals to get there. You’re not going to get there just in one go.

Given that the original Splitgate had a somewhat small but dedicated esports scene, are there any plans for a Pro Series of sorts for Splitgate 2? Even your t-shirt looks like it could be worn by a pro Splitgate 2 player.

Ian Proulx : No specific plans at this time. My philosophy is making fun games that people love. Splitgate is competitive, obviously, but I think there’s a lot of casual fun to be had, especially with some of the upcoming things we’ll be showing. But, esports is not the focus. We want to make a fun game first and then, as the game takes off and as we build a community, we’ll see what direction we’ll take it in further.

You called out the shirt, which is not really meant to convey esports but, rather, it’s meant to convey sports in general. A lot of our inspiration for the art style and the lore of Splitgate 2 revolves around it being the in-game sport of the future. We’re thinking more F1 , NBA and NFL rather than esports.

You’ll notice our branding is very F1 -like…[that’s because] we’ve got a lot of F1 fans at the company! In any case, we wanted to create a future where the world is good and we’re not fighting or taking ourselves too seriously. And that’s where this sport of the future comes into play: it’s fun, it’s a little bit less serious and a little more light-hearted.

Splitgate 2 will release in 2025 on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series and PC.