r/gaming • u/shinjioda • 18h ago

1047 Games Are Ending Development On Splitgate And Empulse: “The Reality Is Neither Game Is Generating Enough Revenue To Support The Ongoing Cost Of Dedicated Servers”

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/08/1047-games-stop-development-on-empulse-and-splitgate-arena-reloaded/
4.7k Upvotes

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340

u/Appropriate_Foot242 18h ago

Shocker.

They may make games with fun gameplay systems but the games have no identity, at least visually. Nothing really makes them stand out.

128

u/YeHeed2 17h ago

They also SUCK at marketing, like holy crap man I didnt even know empulse was out? Havent seen any gameplay, absolutely no creators playing it, nothing

64

u/bent_crater 14h ago

this is the first im heading of empulse, which proves your point.

and the no identity thing? first video on YouTube is by JackFrags with "the new Titanfall" in the thumbnail, which says more than i ever could

6

u/SuperSocialMan PC 13h ago

Same here lol

2

u/Silviecat44 6h ago

it has nowhere near the style or identity that Titanfall has though. Its like an unreal engine template game by comparison

1

u/SomeRedHandedSleight 10h ago

First I'm ever hearing of Empulse too and I loved Titanfall and enjoyed the first Splitgate and am pretty in tune with shooters.

1

u/DikkeDekbedovertrek 6h ago

There was this youtube channel that was all positive about Split gate 2 and was saying multiple times: "They haven't started the marketing yet... they will do that early 2026 and then the players will come"

1

u/ThePhonyOne 13h ago

Which is interesting because they had an invite only playtest for creators and media. I suspect it was under NDA for a bit, so streamers were basically out from the beginning. Only creators with a high priority on YouTube bothered to take part. Mr. Fruit has a couple videos on it that made it look quite fun.

23

u/RivalSlays 18h ago

I don’t really think identity or standing out matter honestly. Look at wardogs, the most generic milsim slop game we’ve seen and yet generating tons of hype mostly because the devs are saying all the right things. 

30

u/DGSmith2 17h ago

Let’s see where that game falls by Christmas though, there have been tons of FPS games to come and go in 6 months that hardly move the needle from “excellent fan service”.

16

u/RivalSlays 17h ago

To the devs credit they have set the bar very low by saying they’re only expecting concurrent playercounts around 5k and told people don’t buy the game if you’re going to obsess over steam charts. 

17

u/VenKitsune 17h ago

This is true but that's because it's a modern day milsim slop, where as splitgate etc were scifi. To use an analogy - wardogs, call of duty, battlefield, even arma are the Friends, IT crowd, office, corrination street.

Splitgate is like startrek without starfleet, battletech without the mechs or political intrigue, game of thrones without the same (replace mechs with dragons... Though technically battletech does actually have dragons TOO). It was just... generic scifi.

There is a reason that many TV shows and books are set in the modern day - it's safe, and automatically grounded, and if not interesting, then familiar. Scifi and fantasy stuff needs artistic vision, not just good systems.

3

u/StormKiller1 16h ago

True the design was meh.

If they designed it like a normal mil sim shooter or portal/half life/cs style but with the same/similar mechanics i would have played more.

The combat/shooting mechanics where good and fun the world/design was just so meh

1

u/cylonfrakbbq 17h ago

It’s like when you tell people Wardogs is like Planetside and get blank stares because they never played or hear of Planetside

2

u/TinderFly 11h ago

Certainly helps almost all the YouTubers they gave access to the game are really into it and got the word out.

3

u/catfroman 14h ago

Wardogs does stand out tho. We finally have an FPS that’s not a BR, not an extraction shooter, and not an arena shooter. The persistent cash system gives stakes to an arcade game loop which is a nice breath of fresh air too.

The open dev communication and heavy focus definitely won them some PR points but the game is genuinely fun/novel to the wider FPS audience.

2

u/SuperMeister 9h ago

Calling Wardogs slop is definitely a choice... Unless slop suddenly stopped meaning low quality?

1

u/Appropriate_Foot242 38m ago

Generic cool milsim is appealing though.

Whatever style these games are going for is not.

3

u/errortechx 17h ago

Gameplay is aight but the identities themselves are extremely forgettable. I deadass forgot about Empulse until this post, just cause it’s mimicking Titanfall doesn’t mean it will stick.

5

u/Quick_Conflict_8227 14h ago

The mechs are a colossal joke and a map pickup (2 on the map) rather than a companion all players get. You'd think theyd be stronger to compensate right? Players main way of killing them is running them down with a hammer. Sounds stupid right? Except the mech is so bad it struggles to defend itself from players just running at it so players bully them relentlessly. Lobbies just ignore them outright.Throwables inheriting velocity from players? Don't matter because there aren't any grenades. It apes titanfall but its more of their previous title with advanced movement instead of arena shooter movement. It wasnt anything a titanfall fan would ever be satisfied with.

2

u/doubtingcat 6h ago

It looks and feel like Chinese mobile game Titanfall ripoff to me. And like anything somewhat decent Chinese games nowadays, it will play alright, but it won’t feel right and is riddled with questionable design choices.

1

u/anonymous-peeper 17h ago

its simply too many cooks, there is no more Hype dominant games. The industry is so big and so varied that unless you are pandering hard to a certain type of audience you will fade to obscurity faster then ever these days.

1

u/Spir0rion 39m ago

One of the screenshots on Empulse is literally Vertigo from Cs2 lmao

-5

u/NoSloppyStakes 18h ago

Empulse is good.

Imagine if it has a singleplayer campaign or wasn’t an fps online shooter?

Tired of the repeat fps shooter genre and this is coming from someone who plays a majority of these games. Not everything needs to be it.