Splitgate 2 actually looks pretty good, and nearest I can tell, has some pretty solid momentum behind it. Borderlands 4, a fellow FPS, also looks pretty good, and definitely has momentum behind it. And yet, the men heading these things simply cannot get out of their own way.

This week, and in the weeks before, it was Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford’s numerous and enormously unpopular comments on game pricing. Tonight, at the Summer Game Fest live show, it was the painfully avoidable division stirred by 1047 Games cofounder and CEO Ian Proulx, who managed to piledrive Splitgate 2’s discourse into the dumpster in a matter of minutes, stealing defeat from the jaws of victory.

Proulx says he made his FPS because he hates Call of Duty, loves Halo, and wants Titanfall 3 – and reckons Splitgate 2’s new battle royale mode is “f***ing awesome.” We’re going to ignore the irony that Splitgate just dropped a battle royale and that Titanfall 3 doesn’t exist in part because EA told Respawn to instead keep operating the battle royale money machine that is Apex Legends, because it’s really not the biggest problem tonight.

It’s hard to overstate how thoroughly and widely Splitgate 2 is getting dunked on after Proulx’s SGF appearance. The reaction hasn’t been universally negative, of course; loads of people are simply celebrating the surprise update, and the devs say they’re seeing their “highest-ever” server traffic. It’s not like Splitgate 2 is going to keel over because of this.

But if an Imagine Dragons remix in your battle royale trailer is the last criticism on peoples’ minds, you may, perhaps, have messed up. Across Twitter, Reddit, and BlueSky, and both in and out of the game’s immediate communities, Splitgate 2 optics are measurably worse than they were about 10 hours ago.

“Hat was cringe as hell,” reads one of the top posts on the Splitgate Reddit. “This was just cringe,” another top post says of the game’s SGF slot.

“If I was a dev and I had spent years working on a game and my boss went on stage and looked like this much of a jackass I’d be so pissed,” reasons YouTuber Jacob Geller.

“I now feel embarrassed for liking this game,” another Splitgate Reddit post reads.

“As a Splitgate 1 fan and a founder pack owner for Splitgate 2, I can’t believe how HORRIBLE of a fumble I just witnessed,” concurs another. Posts just like this are coming up faster than the mods or auto-mods can delete them for purportedly being low-effort.

And, I mean, if you’ve lost the dad hat enthusiasts, what else is there to lose?

Here’s everything announced at Summer Game Fest 2025.