When Ian Proulx and his colleagues at 1047 fully released Splitgate in 2021, his expectations for the multiplayer shooter “Halo with Portals” were fully under control. He expected to do well enough over time and hoped for slow and steady growth. At the time, 1047 consisted of less than 20 individuals and only four engineers.
“But it was like, no, now’s your moment, everything’s on fire,” Proulx says.
Splitgate exploded far beyond what Proulx ever expected or what their small indie team was prepared to handle. It peaked at around two million daily active users, he says, and the team spent the next few months in “firefighting mode” trying to keep the game stable even as interest surged.
Fortunately for Proulx and 1047, Splitgate was a financial success for the team. What’s more, 1047 was able to raise an additional $100 million from investors due to the game’s positive reception. At first they expected to pour this money into building and maintaining Splitgate. But in interview after interview, Proulx and his colleagues found they had to keep their ambitions in check because of the game’s technical and personnel limitations.
“When you’re making an indie game, it’s really about finding your niche, doing a few things really, really well,” says Proulx. “But then you have to cut back because you don’t have the funds for Call of Duty.” And so our view at the time was like, hey, we’re licking our lips. We’re thinking, man, we don’t need to cut corners like that. What if we could do it again?”
Which is exactly what 1047 decided to do. In 2022, the team announced that they were ending active development on Splitgate in order to build Splitgate 2.
“We know what Splitgate does well and we know where it falls short,” explains Proulx. “And we also felt that our goal was to build one of the greatest shooters in the world. We want to be out there competing with Call of Duty, Apex and Fortnite. And we didn’t feel like we could ever get there by continuing to repeat on Splitgate.”
A new trajectory
Today, 1047 officially announced the release of Splitgate 2 on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox sometime in 2025, with the first cinematic trailer showing off the vibes of the sequel and introducing its factions. Starting today, fans can download the Splitgate 2 Companion App, which features a free digital comic book series expanding on the universe’s lore, quizzes, collectible digital cards, and other activities. And 1047 is planning a community playtest later this year, sometime around Gamescom.
Proulx tells me that Splitgate 2 is still essentially Splitgate: it’s still a free-to-play (with only cosmetic microtransactions, reassures Proulx), first-person shooter with 4v4 battles. It’s still a shooter where players play with portals and physics to hurl themselves or their enemies around at wild angles and speeds. The biggest difference between the sequel and its predecessor is the introduction of three different factions, each tailored to a different play style or strategy. 1047 isn’t saying anything about the details of these factions yet, though today’s cinematic trailer offers some clues as to the vibes on offer. Proulx loves tradition, so he channeled his love of the old Halo novels into the Splitgate 2 companion comic as a way to define the art style, characters, and factions for the audience before the game was even released. He tells me that the three pillars his team wants to focus on are “positive”, “sporting” and “future”.
“We don’t kill ourselves to save humanity or defeat evil,” he says. “It’s a sport. And so it is reflected in the tradition, in the artistic style. You saw a very small piece of that in Splitgate because that was always my original vision, I wanted it to be a sport.”
Aside from the addition of factions, Proulx says the most obvious difference between Splitgate 1 and 2 is the map design. In Splitgate, he tells me, he ended up as a somewhat standard map designer. But he hired professionals for Splitgate 2.
“I had no idea what I was doing [in Splitgate 1],” he says. “Some of the [the maps] they’re fine, but now we have actual level designers who are phenomenal. And they’re also, not only are they way better than me, but it’s just our process. Everyone iterates, we play test, we have a much more iterative process. We’re not afraid to test a map, throw it away and start over. And so we ended up with, I think, our best maps ever. But also much more up-to-date instructions and thoughts embedded in the maps.”
For example, he says that the walls that players could place portals on were “sort of randomly” placed in the original game. But now, with combined experience and data from players who have used them over the years, the team has a better understanding of what placement works well and what doesn’t. As a result, there are fewer portal walls in Splitgate 2 than in 1, but their placement is more thoughtful.
“Splitgate was much more of an arena shooter, fast, very circular movement,” adds Proulx. “With this next game, it’s much more of a class shooter or an arcade shooter where he’s still fast. It’s still about shooting people and portaling, but it’s a little more thought out, it’s a little more strategic. The angles are a little more deliberate and less messy.”
In some ways, Proulx and his studio dodged an industry bullet. They raised enough funds to produce Splitgate 2 before the recent industry funding crisis and were able to expand 1047 from less than 20 people to over 170 with top talent from games including Call of Duty and God of War: Ragnarok. And during that time, Proulx has been obsessed with live operations, preparing the team and Splitgate 2 to handle whatever happens in the days and weeks of its launch. He also has a two-year plan for future updates — though he expects that will inevitably change based on community feedback. Whatever happens when Splitgate 2 launches next year, this time Proulx is ready.
“It’s really a dream to build the world’s number one shooter,” he says. “This is what I will fight for forever. But I think, really, if we can make a game that all the Splitgate 1 fans love and will be around forever, but also expand our reach so that people who never enjoyed Splitgate can enjoy this game. This is what I think success would look like.’
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.