If you watched the Summer Game Fest this year, you may remember 1047 Games CEO Ian Proulx deciding to get on-stage announcing the surprise launch of Splitgate 2 while wearing a “MAKE FPS GREAT AGAIN” hat, creating ripples of cringe across watchers. Well, the story gets weirder because now the studio is surprise unlaunching the game and putting it back into beta to implement undisclosed changes ahead of a 2026 rerelease.

“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. We’ll be heads down until early next year, rebuilding major parts of the game to capture the spirit of what made Splitgate special. That means reworking progression from the ground up, adding more portals to our maps, simplifying monetization, refocusing on classic game modes you’ve been asking for, and more, which we’ll share soon.”

The studio is also pausing its roadmap and laying off an unspecified number of staffers in the process, which is a bit of a head-scratcher since those workers would presumably be needed to revamp and relaunch the game later. “We hope to bring them back when we can,” the memo reads.

In a pre-announcement interview on Polygon, Proulx suggested wearing a hat with specific political overtones was “not political” but was still a mistake, claimed that the team spread itself too thin and didn’t successfully deliver a game that was good across all vectors, and did not fully address the game’s microtransaction situation, such as the $80 skin for sale. Our condolences to the employees who are stuck in the reduction of headcount as a result of this move.