In the gaming industry, it seems that every time those in charge make a shortsighted decision, the ones who had nothing to do with it pay the price. Unfortunately, that remains the case with 1047 Games and Splitgate 2.

Before the controversy, I’d actually heard solid things about splitgate 2

I hadn’t gotten around to playing Splitgate 2 after the whole mess about that ridiculous hat kicked off. But I do genuinely remember initial interest in the game from people. Including myself. “Portal but FPS” sounds great. But that happened, and then we found out that there were crazy prices being charged for cosmetics, and that had to be walked back.

This led to a rapidly dwindling player count. Now I don’t put much stock in that as a metric of a game’s quality. However, when you’re a free-to-play game, that is a number that will matter, regardless of what anyone says.

And now, 1047 Games, in a recent update on Reddit, has announced that Splitgate 2 will be reverting to its beta state. In the statement, Ian Proulx says:

“We’ve heard your feedback and we agree with you: we launched too early. We had ambitious goals with Splitgate 2, and in our excitement to share it with you, we bit off more than we could chew. We rushed certain features, made some boneheaded mistakes, and most importantly – we didn’t give you the polished, portal-filled mayhem you fell in love with. So we’re going back to beta.“

but why do the developers involved have to pay for this

Admitting you screwed up is one thing. Following that up with laying people off is wild.

“To give ourselves the time to build the Splitgate you deserve, we’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to reduce certain roles and shift our resources to focus on this rework. This is heartbreaking. These are our teammates and our friends, and they helped build what we have today. They’re receiving severance and job placement support, and we’re committed to doing everything we can to help them through this transition. We hope to bring them back when we can”.

The people at the top continue to collect a paycheck despite the mishaps, and those underneath now have to figure it out. It’s the absolute worst way to operate, and it’s tiring seeing it seemingly every month. Mistakes were made at the top. Own it for real and don’t punish those who don’t get to make the decisions that led to them.

Hopefully, each and every single one of those devs gets to land on their feet.