The endlessly unique saga of Splitgate 2 got another jaw-dropping chapter today as its devs announced the free-to-play FPS will be going back into beta phase.
After making waves earlier this year with one of the game’s makers taking the stage at Summer Game Fest in a “Make FPS Great Again” hat, the move will have its makers “heads down until early next year, rebuilding major parts of the game to capture the spirit of what made Splitgate special,” 1047 Games said in a statement today.
“We’ve heard your feedback, and we agree with you: we launched too early,” the statement said today, just about a month after launching out of beta. “We had ambitious goals with Splitgate 2, and in our excitement to share it with you, we bit off more than we could chew. We rushed certain features, made some boneheaded mistakes, and most importantly – we didn’t give you the polished, portal-filled mayhem you fell in love with.”
Unfortunately, the game’s failures also means layoffs, and 1047 says it has “made the incredibly difficult decision to reduce certain roles and shift our resources to focus on this rework,” since “rebuilding the core experience isn’t a quick fix.”
“This is heartbreaking,” 1047 said. “These are our teammates and our friends, and they helped build what we have today. They’re receiving severance and job placement support, and we’re committed to doing everything we can to help them through this transition. We hope to bring them back when we can.”
But to keep more jobs from being lost, 1047 said it will be shutting down the original Splitgate servers next month, so it’s yet another dosage of bad news out of the announcement today.
“While we’d love to keep servers online indefinitely, it’s cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past couple of years, and we have to prioritize our team,” 1047 said. “Like us, we know this game means a lot to so many of you, so we are exploring the possibility of supporting offline or peer-to-peer matches. And when we return, we plan to have a dedicated experience in Splitgate 2 that delivers on the promise of the original.”
In some modicum of good news, Splitgate 2 will continue to remain playable while the remaining devs work, Chapter 3 of the game is still on the way, and they will also be working on fixes and changes to the existing game.
