The Splitgate beta on Steam is growing and growing. Even long waiting times don’t deter the enthusiastic players.
What a surprising success for an arena shooter: Splitgate recently attracted almost 60,000 simultaneously active players on Steam! That’s on a par with big names like Ark: Survival Evolved or Rainbow Six: Siege and catapulted Splitgate into the top 10 of the most played titles on Steam.
And this despite the fact that the developers are currently completely overwhelmed with the number of players. Waiting times for a match sometimes amount to 90 minutes. Nevertheless, players are apparently happy to queue up for Splitgate.
Patience is also advised: Due to the current lack of servers, the developers have to postpone the full release of Splitgate for the time being.
We summarise the reasons for the hype, the problems the developers are having and how the first-person shooter is to continue here.
What happened?
Splitgate was released in July 2021 in a revised version, initially as a beta version on PC and consoles, before the full release was supposed to take place on 27 July. However, this did not happen.
The rush of players for the free-to-play arena shooter far exceeded the developers’ expectations. Accordingly, there simply wasn’t enough server capacity available to accommodate all the players.
Splitgate's current server situation explained: pic.twitter.com/Gm89wYEWE8
— Splitgate (@Splitgate) August 3, 2021
In the meantime, Splitgate went completely offline, but has now been restarted. And the hype on the PC was even greater, so that almost 60,000 simultaneously active players (via Steamcharts.com) were measured. The developers stated a waiting time of up to 90 minutes to be able to play Splitgate.
How the gameplay of Splitgate looks like, shows you this trailer:
Where does the hype come from?
Arena shooters are currently considered a very risky genre for developers. Many big names like Lawbreakers and the remake of Unreal Tournament have failed in the past, a Quake Champions is cruising around with triple-digit player numbers on Steam.
Splitgate breaks this supposed curse with its colourful mix of fast-paced gunplay and tactical portals. Important factors for success are:
Splitgate is fun: Players report on Steam that they have a lot of fun with the fluid, fast and tricky gameplay of the multiplayer shooter. Both the weapon handling, the portals, the level design and the variety of modes meet with much approval in the Steam reviews from players.
The game is free to play: As a Free2Play title, anyone interested can take a look without obligation. Splitgate is financed via a Battle Pass and cosmetic microtransactions for weapon skins and player models – in addition to the colourful visuals, another parallel to the extremely successful Fortnite.
Splitgate doesn’t need a strong PC: The hardware requirements are very modest. A dual-core CPU, a graphics card on the level of a Geforce GTX 660 and 6 GB of RAM are enough.
The game works on Twitch: Thousands of viewersgive the game strong visibility, especially among younger players.
What happens next?
Splitgate is expected to run stably as soon as possible and leave the waiting times behind. The developers announced that more servers will be made available – but this will take time. In the long term, well over 100,000 simultaneously active players should be possible.
As soon as the technical hurdles have been overcome, the game is to be released as a full version. A rough release date of August 2021 was mentioned.
The server engineer of developer 1047 Games explains how difficult it is to cope with the situation with an illustrative comparison with a restaurant:
The developers recommend that all players expecting a well-rounded gaming experience wait until the full release. On their own Twitter channel those interested can inform themselves about the current status of the Splitgate servers. There is also an official Discord channel.
