Splitgate 2 is dead, long live Splitgate: Arena Reloaded—the shooter's back-to-the-basics relaunch is coming December 17

Seven months after sending Splitgate 2 back to the drawing board, 1047 Games just revealed both its new form—Splitgate: Arena Reloaded—and its December 17 release date during the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted.

This is a back-to-basics reset meant to combine the best elements of the original and the sequel, proudly promising no factions and no character abilities. It's you, your gun, and some physics-bending portals you can use to zip across the map and snipe around corners. So not exactly like the good old days, but more like them.

Design director Josh Watson outlines the approach for the relaunch as "removing what didn't work and refining what did." So, out go the factions and character abilities that complicated gunfights and steered Splitgate a little closer to hero shooters like Overwatch than the arena shooters cited as inspirations in this trailer, like Quake, Unreal Tournament, and Halo.

The cuts are outweighed by the additions. Returning players will find a career progression system, player stats, leaderboards, a reworked ranked mode, five new maps, and four new weapons (including the series' first set of LMGs) to play around with.

All those changes speak to a lost era of multiplayer shooters, where movement and aim define who wins rather than rock-paper-scissors class choices determined before you've even locked crosshairs. Anyone who recalls the halcyon days of mid-2000s Halo or Call of Duty lobbies knows that leaderboards and player stats were never an afterthought, because ultimately that's all that mattered to people. So while multiplayer gaming is irrevocably through the looking glass when it comes to seasons and microtransactions, it's refreshing to see a studio winding back the clock on the things that truly matter: bragging rights.

The relaunch won't change anything when it comes to pricing, so Splitgate: Arena Reloaded will remain free to play when it arrives on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation in just under two weeks. You can wishlist it on Steam.

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