The biggest hook is that there are no longer factions or abilities. Players can customize their loadouts without restrictions or opt for the same playing field. Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill, Gun Game and Shotty Snipers will be included alongside six revamped arenas and five new additions.

There are also three new primary weapons, one new Power weapon, an overhauled Ranked system, and revamped progression that promises rewards “with every match.” This is on top of the dozens of other new features fans can look forward to.

Design director Josh Watson said in a press release that, “Splitgate has always been a love letter to the arena shooters we grew up playing. We’ve been hard at work rebuilding the game from the ground up, taking the best of Splitgate 1 and Splitgate 2, removing what didn’t work, and refining what did.” Studio CEO Ian Proulx also credited the community for this approach as they “led us back to the arena.”

Whether it will rekindle interest in the series remains to be seen, but it is fascinating to see a developer remove long-in-development features like battle royale and whatnot in a bid to return to basics. To learn more about Reloaded’s development, a “mini-documentary” will be released on December 9th, so stay tuned for details on that.

While it’s not official, the announcement is more than likely for Splitgate 2. Fans will likely remember the RHINO armor – this could very well be a variant of the same. The developer ended support for the original in September 2022 after spending much time reworking old systems and content. Instead of pursuing iterative updates, it wants to work on a sequel with “revolutionary, not evolutionary, changes” for fans.

Developed on Unreal Engine 5, the next Splitgate will also be a free-to-play shooter with portals. The original remains online, though it’s more or less dead, with 338 concurrent players on Steam at the time of writing. Nevertheless, with a lifetime peak of 67,724 players and a “Very Positive” rating (out of 111,367 user reviews, 91 percent are positive), it should be interesting to see how the sequel performs.

In three days…

You’re mine. 👊 pic.twitter.com/w2rKHxeXZL

— Splitgate (@Splitgate) July 15, 2024

SYNCED

Developed by NExT Studios, SYNCED is a co-op shooter set against the backdrop of a sci-fi world. Players take control of mercenaries as they venture deep into enemy territory to defeat machines that impose a mortal threat to human existence. In addition to solid third-person cover shooting and the ability to summon Nanobots for assistance, SYNCED also features high-fidelity visuals with great lighting and texture work.

Splitgate

Splitgate combines the high-octane first-person shooting of contemporaries like Halo with some ingenious portal mechanics that come together to create a markedly fresh experience. It’s a lot of fun to move around portals while spraying bullets at your opponents, and the map design provides many options for coming up with your own creative strategies. While Splitgate’s player count has dropped by quite a margin in recent times, it remains an enjoyable time nevertheless.

Resident Evil Village

The Resident Evil series has seen its fair share of remakes in the form of the stellar Resident Evil 2 and the disappointing Resident Evil 3, but it has consistently delivered high-quality follow-ups. These include Resident Evil 7 and its follow-up Village, the latter of which represent the best of what the series offers. Resident Evil Village majestically swerves from one kind of horror to the next without any hiccups, and the action keeps pace with the changing scenery and shifting mechanics. The core gameplay of shooting down zombies is much faster than Resident Evil 7, but it retains the heft and groundedness of a survival horror game that comes together to make it one of the best in its class.

The shooter has enjoyed its fair share of success since then, and naturally, developer 1047 has been looking to kick things up a notch in more ways than one. In fact, the developer has just announced that it’s taking quite a big step towards that end.

1047 Games has announced that it’s ending future development of Splitgate. Rather than focusing on pumping out a number of iterative upgrades for the game, the developer has decided to begin working on a full-fledged sequel that will bring “revolutionary, not evolutionary, changes”. The sequel is set to be developed using Unreal Engine 5, and it’ll be free-to-play.

“Splitgate achieved a level of success that we could not have anticipated and that few indie games are fortunate to reach,” the developer explained. “That initial success brought an opportunity to turn what started as a college dorm dream project into a AAA game that could stand toe-to-toe with shooters from the biggest publishers in the industry. But this also meant that as we’ve brought on top-tier talent from across the industry, we’ve spent a lot of our time trying to rework old content and systems that were originally built by a handful of people.

“We are, in a way, bailing water while also trying to keep everyone who bought a ticket to board our ship happy, while also trying to turn our boat into a rocket ship.

“After careful consideration and much deliberation the 1047 Games team has determined that in order to build the game fans deserve – and to build it in a way that isn’t trying to retrofit and live operate an existing product – we are ending feature development of Splitgate. 

“We’re turning our attention away from iterative, smaller updates and going all-in to focus on a new game in the Splitgate universe which will present revolutionary, not evolutionary, changes to our game. It will be a shooter, it will have portals, and it will be built in Unreal Engine 5. Oh,  and it will be free.

“We understand many of you will be disappointed and have a lot of questions. We want to be clear that Splitgate will remain online as will your items and progression. In fact, we will roll out a new Battle Pass on September 15 – and it will be free to everyone as a thank you for playing Splitgate.”

1047 Games also clarifies that Splitgate will continue to receive backend support as well as smaller patches and fixes in the future. “But the bulk of our focus will be on an entirely new shooter that we can’t wait to share with you,” the developer says.

As such, the game is currently being taken offline so 1047 games can prepare Splitgate for the upcoming season of the game.  The maintenance is currently going on, having kicked off at 12 a.m. PST, and will run up until 6 a.m. PST. The same was announced via 1047 games through Twitter.

Splitgate reached 10 million downloads back in August last year and extended its beta period. The developers are also considering adding in a map editor and single player mode, with the former coming with beta season 1.

https://twitter.com/Splitgate/status/1486609929003749378

Proulx said he’s glad that Halo Infinite is out right now, and its positive reception from both fans and critics has reinstated a love for the arena shooter genre that has proven to be great for Splitgate as well. In the current market populated with battle royale games, the popularity of Halo Infinite and Splitgate is doing great for bringing players over to arena shooters, he says, which is a first for many players, apparently.

“I’m actually glad [Halo Infinite] is out,” Proulx said. “I honestly think that, in the long run, Halo Infinite and Splitgate will help each other. I think that there’s just so much noise and so many battle royales right now, and [these two games] are bringing people over to the arena shooter genre. You know, there’s a lot of kids who have never played Halo, right? There’s a lot of kids who have never played Quake or Unreal Tournament. They’ve never played this kind of game. And getting them exposure to that I think is just a good thing for the genre as a whole.”

Splitgate surpassed 10 million downloads last August, and its popularity doesn’t seem fading. 1047 Games also has some ambitious plans for the game going forward, including but not limited to releases for even more platforms, as well as possibly even a single-player campaign. 

Splitgate has been a massive hit for developer 1047 Games, who has ambitious plans for the future of the franchise. In addition to support for newer platforms, 1047 Games also wishes to add a map editor and a single-player campaign. The developer wishes to go big with Splitgate, and in turn, wish to achieve the stature of Riot Games and League of Legends.

“There’s so much we couldn’t think about because we were a tiny team with a tiny budget, but now everything is on the table,” said the co-founder of 1047 Games. “We’re focusing on the long term—I look at the game as being 25% done. We don’t need to be Fortnite tomorrow, but now it really is about building the next Riot Games, the next big games business.”

Live-service games have been soaring in popularity as of late, with studios such as Norsefell and 1047 Games trying to tap into this space with relatively smaller budgets.

1047 Games recently received 100 million in funding, and in an update published on the game’s official website, the developers spoke about what their plans for the game are, now that they have a significant amount of funding to expand into proper AAA development and turn Splitgate into a much larger, more full-featured game.

Recently, 1047 Games jokingly talked about adding a map editor to Splitgate before Halo Infinite receives its Forge mode, and that is something that they elaborate on in the update. “A map editor feature would still be a massive undertaking and a huge addition to Splitgate,” the developer wrote. “As a player myself, I would love the possibility of disabling certain portal pads and adding new pads that totally change the way maps get played. Pantheon, but the whole ground is one giant portal surface. Stadium, but you add an entirely new upper level. It’s not just portal pads that could be added, of course. You could add walls, bridges, props, weapons, and new spawn points! I would wager that the game mode Contamination would be a lot more fun with custom maps! The number of possibilities is exciting with a feature like that.”

Meanwhile, though Splitgate is currently a multiplayer-only title, 1047 Games has also given at least some thought to adding a single player campaign to the game- though if that does happen, it’ll have a unique twist to it in keeping with the game’s central premise.

“A single player experience is also on the table,” the developer writes. “Sure, this could be a Halo-style single player campaign, but what else could we do? It’s no secret that the arena combat known as “Splitgate” is treated like a sport in the game’s universe. One thing we could do with that idea is something like “franchise mode,” like in traditional sports games. With an overhaul of our bot AI, the game could introduce a large roster of AI Players who can be recruited to play on a team with you. Each AI player has a set of stat ratings like aim, portal movement, and awareness. You and your team would then progress through a sports season and play against other AI teams and eventually compete for the championship. It wouldn’t have to stop with single player either, maybe you could pit your recruited team against the team of another real player! This is another idea with endless possibilities.”

Of course, the developer also points out that none of these ideas are set in stone and, for now, are merely hypotheticals. Of course, the primary focus for 1047 Games for now is going to be expanding the studio by bringing in more people, adding more multiplayer content, and adopting a model that sees updates and fixes releasing on a much more regular basis.

Currently, Splitgate is only available on PC, though 1047 Games does eventually want to bring the game to other platforms, including the Nintendo Switch.