Summary
It’s been a disastrous few days forSplitgate 2and 1047 Studios. Last Friday,1047 founder Ian Proulx bowled on stage at The Game Awardswearing a “Make FPS Great Again” hat, denying it was political in nature. He vowed that he intended to change the landscape of the First-Person Shooter genre, beforerevealing a Battle Royale mode, a trailer set to Imagine Dragons music, anda $140 cosmetic. Of course, it didn’t go down too well.
Proulx initially doubled down on his hat’s message and his derogatory statements towards other FPS titles before walking it back withan apologyyesterday, but it seems the damage is already done.
Although Splitgate 2 saw a fairly significant boost in players following the Game Awards debacle, it has still failed to make an impact in 2025. The “game-changing” shooter has just about cracked Steam’s 25 most played games of the year, and has fallen short of the original Splitgate’s numbers by around 62 percent.
Splitgate 2’s Game Awards Drama Failed To Propel The Game To Lofty Heights
According toSteamDB, Splitgate 2 peaked at 25,785 players the day afterThe Game Awards. When taken in a vacuum, it’s not bad going. It’s almost three times as many players as the game had the day before, so it’s a healthy boost. In the wider gaming landscape, however, it’s not so good.
Splitgate 2’s 25,785 concurrent players on Steam rank it 25th among all games released on the platform this year. It falls behind Roadcraft, Sultan’s Game, and Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time.
This number also pales in comparison to the original Splitgate, which was released in 2019 before Season Zero launched in August 2021. It was during Season Zero that Splitgate peaked, with67,724 players jumping in. This means that Splitgate 2 has only reached about 38 percent of the original game’s players.
Of course, it did take a while for Splitgate to kick off, but you have to imagine the Splitgate 2 team was hoping for more, and it’s hard to argue that the game’s disastrous showing didn’t impact these numbers somehow.
1
1,384,608
2
459,075
3
313,593
4
271,571
5
259,003
6
256,206
7
216,784
8
145,063
9
142,050
10
113,946
11
87,377
12
84,558
13
69,483
14
65,389
15
64,825
16
52,641
17
46,106
18
40,564
19
33,761
20
32,929
21
31,470
22
30,649
23
30,095
24
28,189
25
25,785
An argument could, of course, be made that we’re pitting Splitgate 2 up against titles from a variety of other genres, but there’s still plenty to consider. Splitgate 2 is free-to-play, meaning its barrier to entry is far lower than many games on this list. Theoretically, this should have meant more players at least jumped in to give the game a shot. It’s also had a lot more media exposure than many of the other titles on the list.
FragPunk, Splitgate 2’s closest competitor, is a fine example of what 1047 Studios may have been expecting. Another free-to-play shooter with a twist, FragPunk peaked at 113,946 players at launch, a much healthier number.
Splitgate 2 has a lot of goodwill to repair if it really is to make the impact Proulx wants.
