Is Splitgate 2 a good esports title?

In the summer of 2021, when the entire arena shooter community was waiting for the delayed release of Halo Infinite, Splitgate, a multiplayer shooter that combines Halo’s gunplay with Portal’s portals, started its open beta on console after two years of early access on PC. The community’s reaction was overwhelmingly positive, so much so that the queue times skyrocketed and everyone in the FPS sphere was talking about it.

The success was so great that in the space of a year, the devs decided not to bring Splitgate 1 to its full release but focus on a sequel instead. Over the course of three years, the dev team grew from 15 to 200 people, and the game morphed from a hardcore arena shooter to a more rounded FPS title that has an arena mode but also a battle royale and more large scale maps. With Halo Infinite still maintaining the top spot in the arena genre, developer 1047 Games’ decision to veer towards the mainstream is understandable but it has left a lot of people disgruntled because going against mainstream FPS marketing and game design tactics was one of the core pillars of Splitgate 2’s promotional material.

Splitgate 2 is a first-person shooter that, as a main mechanic, gives players the ability to open up to two portals on dedicated surfaces scattered across the map. Its main mode during the beta period was the Arena mode with small maps and two teams of four facing off, each with their loadout, and powerful weapons scattered across the map. It also had a bigger mode set on larger maps where three teams of eight would clash for the win.

Splitgate 2 was released on June 6 with an announcement right from the Summer Games Fest’s stage. 1047 Games’ CEO Ian Proulx waked Jeff Keighleigh’s stage with a bat from the game and a hat with the slogan “Make FPS Great Again” and announced the arrival of a battle royale mode while heavily criticising the Call of Duty franchise, a tactic that the company used for the entirety of its marketing campaign to attract unsatisfied players from Activision’s multi-billion dollar franchise.

The effects of this move were not those expected by the company: the slogan, due to its political undertones, did not go well with the majority of the community, despite the fact that Proulx said later that it was “not a political statement”. The battle royale mode is not what core fans of the arena-style gameplay wanted, and, much like Call of Duty, the game debuted with an $80 cosmetics bundle. The price (considering that it was listed as the result of a 45% discount) was deemed irrational by the community on Reddit, and the devs quickly halved it, offering full refunds. Despite this, the damage had been done, so at the time of writing, Splitgate still has to regain the fans’ trust.

The main differentiator for Splitgate 2 is its portals. The system created by 1047 Games is really well made and, with practice and imagination, allows for a complete restructuring (in terms of lanes and line of sight) of the maps. There are already a lot of videos of people shooting their adversaries in the back from across the map while portal-chaining, and the skill expression through this system is a lot.

On the loadout side, the game has three factions, each with 25 levels through which faction-specific gear is unlocked. Sabrask is tankier with a barrier and explosives, Aeros is all about movement with stims and advanced portal tech, and Meridian has healing and disorienting capabilities. Every class has the same weapons (albeit with different skins) and the same progression criteria.

Splitgate 2 esports players cannot rely on an official scene at the moment, as the game doesn’t even have a ranked mode. 1047 placed a competitive playlist for the Arena mode in the third spot of their priority list for things to work on in the immediate future of Splitgate 2. Prodigies are emerging, and unofficial tournaments are being organised through the game’s Discord channel.

The competitive potential is there. Both from our own independent testing and from many streamers’ point of view, the game’s foundations are solid, the gunplay is good and the portal mechanics make every match feel fresh. More importantly, portals are a great way of expressing one’s skill so the game is ripe for the emergence of strong personalities with good tricks up their sleeves.

One thing that the community is very unhappy about is the skill-based matchmaking system for unranked games. This is one of the main points of contention for the fans on Reddit because it is one of the biggest grudges of players shifting from Call of Duty. One thing that would curry a lot of favour with users would be to remove SBMM for a more traditional matchmaking system.

Unofficial Splitgate 2 esports tournaments are already underway but we found no official team making a commitment to investing in the game yet. The foundations are there as the gameplay is solid, the skill expression through the portals is great and the match variety, thanks to the many game mods, has been nailed as well. The ball is in 1047 Games’ court because, without developer and publisher investments, no esports scene can emerge and be sustainable.

Splitgate 2, on the gameplay side, has everything it needs to be a competitive arena shooter that’s entertaining to watch and to play at a professional level. To make it a reality, however, the developers must recover from the reputational blow they just received and implement a serious ranked system while laying the groundwork for an official tournament scene. The game is solid in arena mode, and the audience is there with an average player count of around 15,000 people on Steam. Now, what Splitgate 2 needs is more transparent monetisation and some good old-fashioned word of mouth positivity, as the fun is there to be had.