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PayPalAre we making FPS great again yet? The newest version of the portal shooter SPLITGATE: Arena Reloaded arrived in December and didn't seem to do much at all.
We had Splitgate, and then Splitgate 2 that launched with it moving away from the arena style into more of a hero-styled shooter. The Splitgate 2 launch was rough, and players weren't happy, it went so badly they unlaunched it and put it back into a Beta that has now relaunched as SPLITGATE: Arena Reloaded. Confused yet? With the relaunch and rebrand, SPLITGATE: Arena Reloaded has pretty clearly failed to find its place.
Checking on SteamDB, it hit a meagre peak of 2,297 players with the relaunch on December 17th 2025, and rapidly dwindled down afterwards. With a 24 hour peak of just 1,070 and only 557 playing it on Steam right now.
Reacting to the news of it not doing well, the official account on X (Twitter) posted an image statement:
ALT text:
Steam Charts don’t measure fun.
They show one number, on one platform, at one given moment. They don’t show the full picture or what it feels like to actually play, and they definitely don’t capture the community that’s actively helping shape what Arena Reloaded is becoming (including upcoming content like Arena Royale).
Over the past six months, we rebuilt Splitgate from the ground up because we believe in the game, our team, and our community. The 1047 team remains committed to delivering the best version of Splitgate possible.
To our amazing community: thank you. Your feedback and passion have helped make Arena Reloaded better every day.
And to everyone who hasn’t played yet: Arena Reloaded is free, the gameplay’s the best it’s ever been, and we’d love for you to jump in and form your own opinion. A lot of passionate people worked very hard on it.
Sure, some people might be having fun with it, but online-only games need a big healthy community for the developer to continue to exist. Where do you get funding from if the game hasn't found a decent footing? I think we can all see where this is heading right?
A shame, because the basic idea of a shooter with portals was great, but they really fumbled it repeatedly. There's a reason we don't see many modern arena shooters - because they're just not really popular now. The industry clearly moved onto other genres a long time ago.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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They have literally no vision for the game and they try to squeeze in everything they possibly can to make it even bearable. People feel it, and that is why it's not going too well.
TrackerGG challenge is a disaster - it only benefits players who are playing anyway. This will not bring too many new players at all.
Reworking battle royale (which sucked hard in Splitgate 2) in 2026 won't really make any impression on anyone either.
This soulless statement almost comes off as condescending, which I suppose fits their general style of... lets be generous and call it 'communication'.
Quoting: NumerfoltAnd of course, there's no alt text anywhere to be found. But it's probably never been aimed at vision impaired people anyway?I added alt text to the image when the article was originally published, it is there.
Edit: or do you mean specifically in the article (I've additionally added that now)? As the image alt text was always there.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 7 Jan 2026 at 6:18 pm UTC
GustyGhost a day ago
Although according to protondb this does run. I'm curious on how these works with proton/wine. Or maybe the store page is outdated.
Gerarderloper 22 hours ago
There is a lot they can do with this game, I don't know if it has it but they could do 4-8 player coop story missions and all sorts, that be fun challenge. Leaning on pure player vs player engagement WILL eventually fatigue out, even the MASSIVE BIG SUCCESSES have suffered player drops due to this issue!
That is really the biggest mystery to me.
This particular genre did not have any big successes in... decades, at this point?
All games that tried to enter had rather small launch peaks and then kind of fizzled to low hundreds (if that much).
Online games without any kind of progression that are pure PvP arenas just don't do well anymore.
And those that bungle their own launches and sit at about 60% or so obviously don't stand much of a chance, relaunch or not.
Sure, it sucks for the devs, and maybe the game is even great now, who knows.
But in a market with way too many games, in a genre that hasn't been popular in a long while, you really only get one shot.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 8 Jan 2026 at 7:04 am UTC
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