Splitgate 2 Re-announced With a Much Bigger Team and Bigger Dreams

ign.com:

When Ian Proulx and his colleagues at 1047 fully released Splitgate in 2021, his expectations for the “Halo with Portals” multiplayer shooter were fully in check. He expected it to do well enough over time, and was hoping for slow and steady growth. At the time, 1047 consisted of less than 20 individuals, and only four engineers.

“But it was like, nope, this is your moment now, everything's on fire,” Proulx says.

Splitgate blew up far beyond what Proulx ever expected or what their small indie team were ready to handle. It peaked, he says, at around two million daily active users, and the team spent the next several months in “fire fighting mode” trying to keep the game stable amid the surge of interest.

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 thanks to the game’s positive reception. At first, they expected to pour that money into building and maintaining Splitgate. But in conversation after conversation, Proulx and his colleagues found they had to keep their ambitions in check due to the game’s technical and the team’s personnel limitations.

“When you're making an indie game, it's really about finding your niche, doing a few things really, really well,” Proulx says. “But then you do have to cut corners, because you don't have the resources of a Call of Duty. And so our view at the time was like, wow, we're licking our lips. We're thinking, man, we don't have to cut corners like this. What if we could do it all over again?”

Which is exactly what 1047 decided to do. In 2022, the team announced they were ending active development on Splitgate in the interest of building Splitgate 2.

“We know what Splitgate does well, and we know where it falls short,” Proulx explains. “And we also felt like our goal is we want to build one of the biggest shooters in the world. We want to be out there competing with Call of Duty, and Apex, and Fortnite. And we didn't feel