Developer 1047 Games has announced that its upcoming portal-based competitive shooter, Splitgate 2, will be getting an open beta on May 22. The announcement was made with a teaser trailer which you can check out below. The open beta will be available across PC (via Steam and Epic Games Store), PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. All versions also feature cross-platform multiplayer.
As shown in the trailer, the open beta for Splitgate 2 will include more than 25 weapons for players to mess around with, including a new energy carbine power weapon dubbed the Borealis. The beta will also include more than 15 maps, two of which are new massive 24-player Onslaught maps, dubbed Drought and Fracture.
Throughout their time with the Splitgate 2 open beta, players will be able to play around with more than 10 modes, including the returning game mode Takedown, where the goal is for a team to eliminate the entirety of the opposing team before they can respawn.
Along with all of this content, Splitgate 2‘s open beta will also get something called “infinite” maps. Details about this, however, haven’t yet been revealed. In its announcement of the beta, the studio has said that it will explain the meaning of “infinite” maps, along with details of all the available game modes and maps closer to when the beta kicks off.
1047 Games has previously spoken about how, while the original Splitgate was heavily inspired by shooters like Halo as well as the portal mechanics from Valve’s first-person puzzle game Portal, the studio wants to forge its own identity with the sequel. Back in January, studio CEO Ian Proulx spoke about Splitgate 2 needing to be its own thing.
“Halo meets Portal was a pretty good tagline for a team that had no marketing budget,” said Proulx. “But we want to build our own path with this sequel. We don’t want to just be the ‘Halo meets Portal‘ team. Those games were obviously a huge inspiration, we’re not shy about that, but Splitgate 2 needs to be its own thing.”
Proulx also spoke about the studio taking cues from other live-service games when it comes to supporting Splitgate 2 with post-launch content. This largely came down to the fact that the original Splitgate, while popular, wasn’t able to convince players to return to the title after they had first played it.
“Our short-term retention was world-class, up there with the top shooters,” Proulx explained. “Players would come and play Splitgate for about four weeks, have a good time, leave a good review – we’re 92% positive on Steam – and then they would run out of things to do. Games like Apex Legends, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Valorant would have big updates and players would go back to them. The biggest lesson learned is how key this part of game development is; figuring that out and being able to move quickly is just so important.”
While Splitgate 2 doesn’t yet have a proper release date, 1047 Games has been releasing quite a few trailers for the title. Check out the one from December 2024, which gave us a look at the three playable factions, as well as how portals will affect the flow of what would otherwise be a standard multiplayer shooter.
