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The Verge
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
The whiplash of covering Summer Game Fest 2025 in LA
I love going to Summer Game Fest. It's a rare opportunity to connect with my colleagues and friends in person, as well as listen to developers talk about why they make their games. In some ways, this year's SGF gave me everything I love about the event. But while I was comfortably ensconced in a happy bubble, the escalating conflict between demonstrators protesting against immigration raids and the Los Angeles Police Department cast a dark and soul-shaking pall that could not be ignored. Everything started on June 6th, when it was reported that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had conducted a raid in LA's fashion district, the same area where most of SGF was being held. I wasn't around to experience that because I was at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California, watching Geoff Keighley announce a Game of Thrones RTS and a Wu-Tang game. But when Ian Proulx, Splitgate 2 creator and CEO of 1047 Games, came out with his now-infamous 'Make FPS Great Again' hat, it punctured the illusion of distance in time, space, and tone. In the months since President Donald Trump took office, ICE has ramped up its activities, sending agents to snatch parents from their children and children from their schools, enabled under the auspices that removing immigrants will be what makes America great again. Proulx's hat became the story of the day, if not the whole event. It was the main topic of conversation at the lobby bar of the JW Marriott hotel, where each night of SGF is capped off with a mixer. How could someone choose to reference such a statement, even in jest or irony, as the very people that slogan has been used to target are being snatched up mere blocks away? Saturday was business as usual. Proulx's hat was forgotten as I settled in to work, flitting between wall-to-wall appointments checking out Escape Academy 2, the new Lego Party game, and Deadpool VR with no time to chat or even eat. I didn't check my phone for hours, and every TV was playing a video game. I had no idea what was happening both in Los Angeles and in the White House. But when there was finally a lull, I popped online, where I was greeted with a deluge of messages from people who were watching the news, telling me that something (a nebulous, undefined, but nevertheless urgent something) was happening and that I needed to get back to the safety of my hotel. Thankfully, my worst fears about martial law declarations and curfews didn't come to pass while I was there, but they did after I was back home. People had taken to the streets of LA in protest of ICE action and began moving through parts of the city, demonstrating and occasionally clashing with the police (and autonomous vehicles). But at that moment, when I was hearing that insurrection acts were going to be invoked and that the National Guard was being mobilized to sweep the city, I became legitimately scared — particularly for attendees who weren't citizens and those with immigrant families. How could someone choose to reference such a statement, even in jest or irony? One such colleague, Janet Garcia, wrote an incredible account of what it was like working SGF and being the child of a Mexican immigrant. Her words right now are more important than mine. SGF also coincided with the BET Awards, and honoree Doechii also had a powerful message for the moment. There had already been several stories of international travelers being detained in the US for weeks, and I was scared that if something was happening, my journalist friends from Canada, the UK, and elsewhere could get caught in the mix. Word began spreading that something (again, what that was, nobody could say, and that uncertainty compounded the fear) was happening, and my friends and I all began to start asking aloud: do we need to leave? Some said yes, and I was ready to do just that, but something stopped me. I will never be able to adequately express how weird my job is in situations like this. It's really hard to write about the colorful pixels on a TV when it feels like the world is seconds away from catching fire. And yet I do it every day. Right when I was about to make the decision to leave early, a Capcom PR rep tapped me on the shoulder. I was late to my Resident Evil Requiem appointment. And I went, because in that scary moment I still thought, 'I have a job to do.' I did my best with Requiem, plodding along the abandoned hospital, being suitably impressed by how the sound of Grace's footsteps changed when she walked on the wooden floor vs. the floor covered in bits of broken drywall. But my phone kept buzzing with notifications throughout it all. Midway through the demo, my stress was so high from the ambient spookiness of the game and all the happenings outside the SGF bubble that I couldn't take it anymore. I made my profuse apologies to my PR contact (who was exceedingly gracious and understanding) and left. The mood that night at the hotel was less exuberant. It wasn't just everything going on in LA: the mood of the event itself was the lowest I'd ever seen it in the handful of years that SGF has served as E3's smaller, vibe-ier replacement. There were games there, good ones, but nothing big enough to anchor the show. As the industry faces its third straight year of rampant layoffs, cancellations, delays, and studio closures we're finally starting to see the pipeline of blockbuster games dry up. This was a stark contrast to last year when Sega had Metaphor: ReFantanzio and Shadow Generations, Bandai Namco showed off Shadow of the Erdtree, PlayStation was there with Astro Bot, and Xbox had just announced Gears of War: E-Day. I'm home now. And despite this year's strangeness, I look forward to going back to Summer Game Fest. Because if video games have taught me anything over the years, it's that in the face of overwhelming odds, the best thing one can do is stick together with your friends.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Maga-flavoured faux pas that shook the games industry
One thing most game developers can agree on in the modern industry is that it's hard to drum up any awareness for your latest project without a mammoth marketing budget. Last year, almost 20,000 new titles were released on the PC gaming platform Steam alone, the majority disappearing into the content blackhole that is the internet. So when a smaller studio is offered the chance to get on the stage at the Summer Games Fest, an event streamed live to a global audience of around 50 million people, it's a big deal. Not something that you want to spectacularly misjudge. Enter Ian Proulx, cofounder of 1047 Games. His short slot at the event earlier this month had him walking on stage with a baseball bat to promote the online shooter Splitgate 2 by announcing that he was 'tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year', while wearing a cap bearing the slogan 'Make FPS great again'. It did not go well. Gamers and fellow developers criticised his decision to diss another studio's game as well as his politically charged use of a Maga/Trump meme, especially with anti-ICE protesters being beaten and arrested just across town. Proulx defended his actions, denying that his use of the cap slogan was political, but four days later he made an apology via X explaining: 'We needed something to grab attention, and the honest truth is, we tried to think of something and this is what we came up with.' What Proulx failed to anticipate is that in the fast-paced meme culture of 2025, context, nuance and sociopolitical intricacy are vital and constantly changing. You can't simply put on a cheeky grin and appropriate whatever signs and symbols are floating around 4Chan – look at Elon Musk and how embarrassingly dated his mid-2000s edgelord shtick has become. You can't deploy the Maga anthem without contextualising it; and you definitely can't claim to be the cutting edge saviour of the FPS while promoting not only a sequel but a battle royale mode of all things. In 2025 – are you kidding? I don't know the exact situation at 1047 Games, but I've visited hundreds of game development studios all over the world. No matter how progressive they want to appear, there is often, at the very top, a familiar monoculture of middle-class men of a certain age, with certain tastes, who can sometimes overlook the fact that their experiences and views might not reflect those of everybody else. Proulx said something telling: 'We tried to think of something and this is what we came up with.' In the boardroom, surrounded by likeminded pals, it probably seemed like a laugh, but perhaps they should have checked with someone else first. Splitgate 2 is now in the unfortunate position where a portion of its potential customers were turned off by this ill-judged Maga bit, and an entirely separate portion hate that Proulx apologised for it, thereby capitulating to the woke mind virus. Multiplayer games rely on an engaged community to spread the word about them, so this is very much not ideal. There are smarter things Proulx could have done on that stage with his 30 seconds of fame. When you look back at greatest E3 moments of years gone by, the memorable spectacles have been positive: former Xbox chief Peter Moore and his Halo 2 tattoo; game artist and director Ikumi Nakamura charming the whole world with her unguarded enthusiasm for Ghostwire: Protocol; actor Keanu Reeves shouting, 'You're breathtaking!' at an audience member during the Cyberpunk 2077 stage show; Swedish developer Martin Sahlin tearing up talking about the platform game Unravel. In a culture heavy with faux machismo and attitude, these charming, funny, daft moments broke through like shards of sunlight. You don't need to take to the stage with a slogan or a baseball bat. The greatest asset you can wield in this highly digital, massively anonymised creative industry is humanity. There are a few eye-catching games our this week, including Date Everything, a game in which you can flirt with your toaster; Tron: Catalyst, a novel take on Disney's cyber-universe from Bithell Games of Subsurface Circular fame; and FBC: Firebreak, a three-player co-op spin-off from cult studio Remedy's oeuvre. I'm personally most interested in Rematch, however, an arcade-y 5-v-5 football game whose developers have clearly played a lot of Rocket League. Unlike EA Sports FC, you inhabit just the one player rather than the whole team, and all those players have the same flashy skills, so there's none of the stats and strategy of EA Sports FC. In other words, this is a football game that you can enjoy without knowing much about football. Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Estimated playtime: whatever you want to put into it As part of the Guardian's Pride month series about unexpected queer icons, Keza MacDonald wrote about the Zelda series' Link as a non-binary icon; Jason Okundaye wrote about the divas of the fighting game genre; and Jordan Page wrote about the gender-playfulness of Pokémon. (Another, non-games-related favourite from this series: Lucy Knight on the perfect lesbian cookbook.) While we're on the subject, Guardian Games contributor Sarah Maria Griffin's new novel Eat the Ones You Love, a wild queer romance about a cannibalistic plant, is out now. The Nintendo Switch 2 sold 3.5m units in its first week, making it the fastest-selling Nintendo console and the biggest console launch of all time in the US and Japan. Keza and I have chosen the best video games of 2025 so far, several of which we've rhapsodised about in issues of Pushing Buttons. Have you got a favourite that didn't make the list? We're collecting readers' picks, too. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion Pragmata, the quirky science-fiction game that's back from the dead Beyond Mario Kart World: what else is worth playing on Nintendo Switch 2? 'Addictive fear': my goosebump-inducing first encounter with Resident Evil Requiem Hong Kong police tell people not to download 'secessionist' mobile game MindsEye – a dystopian future that plays like it's from 2012 | ★★☆☆☆ Reader Adam asks this week's question: 'As an English literature student I very much enjoyed this week's Pushing Buttons newsletter on the intersection of video games and Shakespeare, and it got me thinking - what other classic works of literature could be adapted well as video games, or what other classic authors could have written video games and in what genres? I've always thought Edmund Spenser's 16th-century epic The Faerie Queene would make a great open-world game.' Conveniently, as an English literature graduate myself, this is something to which I have given a lot of thought. In terms of classic works that would make great games, I'd play The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a dark, rogue-like take on The Oregon Trail with the visual style of The Return of the Obra Din; I'd play Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a Silent Hill-style psychological horror; or Pride and Prejudice as rules-heavy dating sim (we came enticingly close to this with the now sadly defunct multiplayer online game, Ever, Jane); both Tom Jones and Middlemarch would make incredible open-world adventures. In the category of 'historical writers who would now be game designers', I would put two obvious candidates: Mary Shelley and HG Wells, writers who were interested in and profoundly inspired by science and technology. I'd also say Bertolt Brecht, a dramatist who used various technologies to capture the interest of popular audiences, and August Strindberg, who wrote plays, but also took photographs and dabbled in the occult. I could see him presenting some wild, densely symbolic role-playing adventure at the Summer Games Fest – and he wouldn't need a baseball bat or a cap with a dumb slogan. If you've got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – email us on pushingbuttons@
The Verge
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
It's more than just a hat
There's a line in showbiz that goes, 'There's no such thing as bad publicity.' Ian Proulx, CEO of 1047 Games and creator of Splitgate 2 has recently learned the hard way that's not entirely true. Last week, during the Summer Game Fest keynote livestream, Proulx came out to promote his game wearing a black hat that read, 'Make FPS Great Again' — an obvious reference to Donald Trump's Make American Great Again slogan. The Splitgate 2 community, journalists, and regular gamers seized on the hat (and not, you know, the game) immediately calling the statement gross and tone deaf statement. As questions from the Splitgate 2 community poured in, Proulx doubled down on social media saying that he would not apologize and that the hat wasn't a political statement and should be taken at face value. Today, however, he's singing a different tune. He posted on X with the simple caption, 'No excuses, I'm sorry,' accompanied by a nearly three-minute video explaining the decision to wear the hat and the intention behind it. 'We needed something to grab attention, and the honest truth is, we tried to think of something, and this is what we came up with,' Proulx said. He acknowledged that he was aware the hat would raise controversy. His apology was not for the hat itself, but the discussion surrounding the hat within the Splitgate 2 community. Proulx claimed he did not want the division he himself sowed. 'The reason I'm sorry is because of what this has done to the community,' he said. He continued: 'We knew there would be some level of controversy, but we really saw this as a meme that was kind of stating our truth.' As Proulx was making his statement, a few miles away in Los Angeles' fashion district where the Summer Game Fest Play Days campus resides, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was conducting raids snatching up people just going about their lives; raids that led to city-wide clashes between people protecting their neighbors and defenders of a cruel regime. When I reported on the Trump-evoking slogan and the backlash to it, some commenters responded that 'it's just a hat.' But it is not just a hat. Aping a political statement that has been used to enact state violence isn't 'a meme,' it is a continuation of that violence. I think of the people in attendance at the show and those who work at the YouTube Theater who are immigrants or have immigrant family members. I think of the bartender at the City Market Social House, the venue where SGF holds its Play Days event, who told me about the protocol they have in case ICE shows up: how people can hide in a room in the basement and hand out cards so they don't have to speak to ICE and potentially implicate themself.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Splitgate 2 Boss Says $80 Skin Bundle 'Slipped Through The Cracks'
1047 studio head Ian Proulx courted controversy at Summer Game Fest last week by taking shots at Call of Duty and wearing a hat with the MAGA-infused slogan 'Make FPS Great Again.' But it was his new multiplayer shooter's eye-popping microtransactions that subsequently turned Splitgate 2 into an online punching bag, and Proulx is now blaming some of those prices on an ex-employee who he says used to work on Call of Duty. One item in particular, an $80 skin bundle called Nano Swarm, quickly made the rounds. While Proulx talked on stage at Geoff Keighley's showcase about his love of old Halo LAN parties and wanting Titanfall 3, his free-to-play arena shooter was plastered with expensive microtransactions and about to get a new battle royale mode, undercutting his critiques of other modern live-service games like Black Ops 6. A silver-colored portal animation from the Nano Swarm bundle alone was originally priced at $34. Proulx has been taking the opportunity to keep posting through the controversy over the weekend, including slashing the prices on all cosmetics and releasing short video diaries updating players on the status of 1047's post-launch priorities for Splitgate 2. 'I've had a lot of people ask me, 'How the hell did this happen in the first place, like an $80 bundle, that's not the 1047 way?'' he said. 'I agree and I thought I would just candidly tell you exactly what happened. So I'll start by saying no excuse of course like I should have been on this, we should have been on top of this. He contionued: The second I got off that stage I called Derek our lead game designer and I said 'Derek did you know we had an $80 bundle, this is news to me, like what the heck, that makes no sense,' and he didn't. Essentially what happened out former head of monetization who happened to come from call of duty was with us for less than a year and was very aggressive on price. Actually prior to his departure we actually originally had founders packs for $100 and battle passes for $10 and the first thing Derek and I did when we revaluated everything a month ago was slash those things so founders went from $100 to $60 and we actually added in game currently that the game originally wasn't going to have we decreased the battle pass from $10 to $5 but unfortunately things slipped through the cracks. In addition to shifting the blame to a past employee and once again trying to beef with Call of Duty, Proulx's explanation doesn't entirely square with the studio's defending of the pricey cosmetics just days prior. 'This pack features our most unique skins with complex animations & artwork,' the official Splitgate 2 account posted back on Friday. 'We have a variety of cheaper options. The game is free to play, & you don't need to buy anything to enjoy it to its fullest. Nothing is pay to win & never will be.' So did the bundle 'slip through the cracks,' or is 1047 just backtracking now in the face of players revolting against a hostile monetization strategy that violates the 'old school' ethos Splitgate 2 wants to cultivate? People have pointed out on the subreddit that the problem isn't just that the prices started out to high. The shooter's in-game shop is also full of slimy practices like fake inflated discounts and currency mismatches so players always have to overspend to get what they want. 'Honestly, the store and its prices really feel like something out of a gacha game, except for the fact I don't think I know of any gachas that have you preorder [battle] passes,' wrote one player. 'Great gameplay, terrible business model,' wrote another. Splitgate 2 is currently sitting at mixed reviews on Steam, though Proulx said the free-to-play shooter reached over 2 million players over the weekend. We'll see if the sequel can stick around longer than its predecessor did. . For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Forbes
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Splitgate 2' CEO Won't Apologize For ‘Make FPS Great Again' Hat
Splitgate 2 It's been a wild Summer Game Fest so far, and one of the most talked-about moments of Friday's showcase was the appearance of Splitgate 2, and its developer's CEO, Ian Proulx. Splitgate 2''s Proulx took the stage in a black hat that said 'Make FPS Great Again,' a riff on the famed Trump MAGA hat. He then proceeded to trash-talk some of the other competitors in the space: "I grew up playing Halo, and I'm tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year. And I wish we could have Titanfall 3," Proulx said. "With Splitgate 2, we asked ourselves how we can take portals to the next level. The reveal was that Splitgate 2 would get a battle royale mode, launching now, which was mocked for claiming to be 'innovative' with that genre and also having a COD-like expensive microtransaction shop. Though many have played the game an enjoyed it. Shortly after the show, Ian Proulx used the official Splitgate 2 account to address the hat issue specifically, albeit saying specifically it wasn't an apology. The tweet: 'I'm not here to apologize but I am here to clarify. This is not a political statement, it is quite literally what it says, so take it at face value.' 'The state of multiplayer FPS games is tragically stale. We hope to fix that, whether you want Arena, Battle Royale, Onslaught, or Map Creator.' FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder I am in fact prone to believe that Proulx was attempting to make a joke rather than actually expressing support for Trump and MAGA, but that doesn't mean it isn't an awful idea that never should have happened. Nor was the tweet with a picture of him in the hat giving a thumbs up alongside the non-apology. Proulx doubles down on the idea that FPS games are now 'tragically stale,' and you can agree with that or not, but many do consider it poor form to go directly after rivals. I can't say I care all that much about that, but multiple factors here combined to make an awkward, goodwill-sapping reveal of what could have been a non-distracting promotion of a new mode. Splitgate 2 The announcement increased Splitgate 2's playercount. It went from an average peak of 9-11K concurrent players on Steam to 25,785 after the reveal. The question, of course, is how long that surge may last, and none of this seems exactly like it's about to shake up the hierarchy of power in the FPS universe.
