split gate, the sci-fi portal shooter that transported me back to the carefree Quake 3 Arena days, is getting a series of updates on January 27th with the Season One Beta update. There’s a map builder to build and share stages with friends, a 100-level battle pass, as well as new One Flag CTF and Evolution modes. (The latter gives the losing team each round increasingly powerful weapons.) Developer 1047 Games also says that the Foregone Destruction map is getting a huge fidelity boost, which should be a sign of similar updates coming to other maps.
“Our custom map creator will continue to evolve along with the rest of the game,” said Ian Proulx, CEO of 1047 Games, in a statement. “We’re looking at the map maker as a community-driven evolutionary tool – it’s a robust feature for fans to play with day one of our new season, and we’re really interested in hearing feedback from the community on the types of features and tools they want.”
All this sounds like great news for split gate fans – at least, the few that stuck around. According SteamDB, the game is currently seeing 1,000 to 2,500 players a day, a far cry from its peak of 67,000 players five months ago. I would bet on the launch of Halo Infinite Free multiplayer mode in December didn’t help (that’s where all my free time has been spent lately), but splitgate popularity has also dropped steadily since its open beta last August.
Sure, it was impressive that Splitgate hit 10 million downloads in less than 30 days, but with the plethora of free shooters out there, 1047 Games will need to do more to keep people interested in the game’s full release. A hardcore fan base is not enough.
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