Splitgate 2 Proves All Publicity Isn’t Good Publicity As Game’s Player Count Only Just Cracks The Top 25 Of This Year

Splitgate 2

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It’s been a disastrous few days for Splitgate 2 and 1047 Studios. Last Friday, 1047 founder Ian Proulx bowled on stage at The Game Awards wearing 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, before revealing a Battle Royale mode, a trailer set to Imagine Dragons music, and a $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 with an apology yesterday, but it seems the damage is already done.

Although Splitgate 2 saw a fairly significant boost in players ing 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 to SteamDB, Splitgate 2 peaked at 25,785 players the day after The 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, with 67,724 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.

You can check out the 25 most-played new games on Steam so far this year below:

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.