1047 studio head Ian Proulx courted controversy at Summer Game Fest last week by taking shots at Call of Duty and wearing a hat with the MAGA-infused slogan “Make FPS Great Again.” But it was his new multiplayer shooter’s eye-popping microtransactions that subsequently turned Splitgate 2 into an online punching bag, and Proulx is now blaming some of those prices on an ex-employee who he says used to work on Call of Duty.
One item in particular, an $80 skin bundle called Nano Swarm, quickly made the rounds. While Proulx talked on stage at Geoff Keighley’s showcase about his love of old Halo LAN parties and wanting Titanfall 3, his free-to-play arena shooter was plastered with expensive microtransactions and about to get a new battle royale mode, undercutting his critiques of other modern live-service games like Black Ops 6. A silver-colored portal animation from the Nano Swarm bundle alone was originally priced at $34.
Proulx has been taking the opportunity to keep posting through the controversy over the weekend, including slashing the prices on all cosmetics and releasing short video diaries updating players on the status of 1047's post-launch priorities for Splitgate 2. “I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘How the hell did this happen in the first place, like an $80 bundle, that’s not the 1047 way?’” he said. “I agree and I thought I would just candidly tell you exactly what happened. So I’ll start by saying no excuse of course like I should have been on this, we should have been on top of this.
He contionued:
The second I got off that stage I called Derek our lead game designer and I said ‘Derek did you know we had an $80 bundle, this is news to me, like what the heck, that makes no sense,’ and he didn’t. Essentially what happened out former head of monetization who happened to come from call of duty was with us for less than a year and was very aggressive on price.
Actually prior to his departure we actually originally had founders packs for $100 and battle passes for $10 and the first thing Derek and I did when we revaluated everything a month ago was slash those things so founders went from $100 to $60 and we actually added in game currently that the game originally wasn’t going to have we decreased the battle pass from $10 to $5 but unfortunately things slipped through the cracks.
In addition to shifting the blame to a past employee and once again trying to beef with Call of Duty, Proulx’s explanation doesn’t entirely square with the studio’s defending of the pricey cosmetics just days prior. “This pack features our most unique skins with complex animations & artwork,” the official Splitgate 2 account posted back on Friday. “We have a variety of cheaper options. The game is free to play, & you don’t need to buy anything to enjoy it to its fullest. Nothing is pay to win & never will be.”
So did the bundle “slip through the cracks,” or is 1047 just backtracking now in the face of players revolting against a hostile monetization strategy that violates the “old school” ethos Splitgate 2 wants to cultivate? People have pointed out on the subreddit that the problem isn’t just that the prices started out to high. The shooter’s in-game shop is also full of slimy practices like fake inflated discounts and currency mismatches so players always have to overspend to get what they want.
“Honestly, the store and its prices really feel like something out of a gacha game, except for the fact I don’t think I know of any gachas that have you preorder [battle] passes,” wrote one player. “Great gameplay, terrible business model,” wrote another.
Splitgate 2 is currently sitting at mixed reviews on Steam, though Proulx said the free-to-play shooter reached over 2 million players over the weekend. We’ll see if the sequel can stick around longer than its predecessor did.
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