Splitgate 2 Developers Face Layoffs After Rocky Launch for Free-To-Play FPS

1047 Games, the developer behind Splitgate and the recently announced follow-up, Splitgate 2, has just announced a round of layoffs to an undisclosed number of “valued 1047 Games team members,” according to an announcement on LinkedIn. The studio says that the decision was made at a time when the company is “redirecting resources to build the best game for our players.” In addition to the job cuts, 1047 Games’s co-founders, Ian Proulx and Nicholas Bagamian, are not receiving salaries at this time. The announcement claims that the studio is working on the next phase of Splitgate 2 and using community feedback to perfect the gameplay experience.

Adding insult to injury, the company’s CEO was recently criticized online for wearing a hat that said “Make FPS Great Again” to the Summer Game Fest event shortly after releasing Splitgate 2, which faced a somewhat negative reception because of generic battle royale gameplay mechanics and aggressive monetization tactics. Currently, the game has a “Mixed” review rating on Steam just over a month after its initial launch into Early Access. According to an X post by Proulx, he was unaware of the game’s aggressive monetization and $80 launch bundles, which were also part of the reason the game was heavily criticized at launch. The first Splitgate game also had a somewhat mixed response at its initial Beta launch in 2019, so it would not be surprising to see the game and developer bounce back from this hit, however, some of the original Splitgate community seems to have been burned by the rocky launch and CEO’s recent statements.