Splitgate 2, the “what-if-Halo-but-also-Portal” shooter, had a rocky launch this year following a controversial Summer Game Fest appearance and aggressive monetization practices. But the game is hoping to open a new chapter with players after it went back into beta status in July 2025, after launching just a month prior. It’s marking that new chapter with a name change. The game will now be known as Splitgate: Arena Reloaded. A promotional video describes it as being rebuilt “from the ground up.”
He’s changed, babe. For real this time.
In a video posted to the official Splitgate YouTube channel (h/t Eurogamer), 1047 Games’ design director Josh Watson describes the game as a tribute to classic arena shooters such as Unreal, Quake, and of course, Halo. To that end, Splitgate has ejected factions and unique abilities to hopefully lock into that old-school arena style gameplay, just with fancy portals. The full experience is expected to launch for free on December 17, 2025. Check out the gameplay here:
Splitgate managed to really step in it this summer after director Ian Proulx took to the Summer Game Fest stage in 2025 to deliver an obtuse rant about the state of modern shooters, all while sporting a “Make FPS Great Again” hat. As if that wasn’t enough, Splitgate 2 featured many uncomfortable trappings of modern shooters: aggressive microtransactions and costly cosmetic bundles. And for a game that promised to return to a classic style of shooter gameplay, the inclusion of a battle royale mode was odd.
As such, the release of the sequel didn’t go over well with fans. In response, 1047 Games pulled its shooter back into an indefinite beta status to rework the experience five months ago. Whether it will be enough to smooth things over with folks remains to be seen.
Splitgate impressed early on in 2019 with its fusion of classic arena shooter gameplay with portal shenanigans. They could be prone to gimmicky plays, but tossing portals into the mess of traditional arena-shooter action often proved to be a nice change of pace. Let’s see if its second emergence from beta and the new name will be enough for the sequel to make waves again.
