Queueing for a Match That Isn't the Same Game
It's September 3, 2026, and a Splitgate: Arena Reloaded player hits Queue like any other night. The match still loads, the guns still fire, the portals still open mid-firefight. What's changed is what's happening underneath: matchmaking no longer reaches for a dedicated server. It reaches for another player's connection instead.
1047 Games, the studio behind Splitgate: Arena Reloaded and Empulse, has confirmed it is shutting down dedicated server support for both games effective that date. In place of dedicated infrastructure, the games move to peer-to-peer and server-browser hosting, according to Shacknews, with Worthplaying corroborating the shutdown and 1047's shift away from active development on either title.
From Beating Halo to Can't Afford the Servers
Splitgate wasn't supposed to be a footnote. When the free-to-play portal-shooter mashup broke out in 2021, it was a genuine underdog story: a small studio's Portal-meets-Halo concept briefly pulled more concurrent players on Steam than Halo itself managed at the time. It was the kind of surprise hit that live-service pitches are built around.
Five years later, that same studio is explaining why the servers are going away. Co-founders Ian Proulx and Nicholas Bagamian said neither Splitgate nor Empulse generates enough revenue to support the ongoing cost of dedicated servers, and that 1047 has reached the point where continuing to run them is no longer sustainable. The studio has signaled its next project will look very different from either game.
What 'Servers Cost More Than Players Pay' Means in Practice
Peer-to-peer and server-browser hosting is not a cosmetic change. One player's machine, not a data center 1047 controls, now carries the match. In practice that usually means higher and less consistent latency, an easier environment for cheaters to exploit, and connection quality that depends on whoever happens to be hosting that round.
None of that requires 1047 to announce a shutdown, because nothing is being shut down in the way players usually recognize. The game still launches, the store still sells cosmetics and currency, and the downgrade shows up only in how the matches actually feel. That's what makes this admission useful: it's a specific, dated, on-the-record case of the exact failure mode free-to-play live-service games have long been warned about, not a hypothetical one.
Why EU and UK Players Have Little Recourse
Anyone who has bought a battle pass, a cosmetic bundle, or in-game currency in Splitgate or Empulse paid for an experience that included dedicated-server matchmaking. That experience is now quietly different, and there is no refund mechanism attached to the change, because the games were never sold as one-time purchases with fixed specifications in the first place.
That gap is structural. EU digital content rules and the UK's consumer protection framework were both largely built around goods and software you buy once, not services that a studio can degrade indefinitely while continuing to sell the same storefront. A dedicated-server shutdown that keeps the app running is a clean illustration of a case current rules were not really written to catch.
Servola Journal
We do this for everyone trying to keep up with what technology is doing to our lives. The people who build it, and the people it happens to. The Servola Journal exists so that what we learn belongs to all of them.
Nobody pays us for this. No ads, no paywall, free to everyone. We just believe that understanding what's happening to all of us shouldn't depend on who can afford to pay for it.
If it gave you something today, tell us to keep going. Follow us, leave a like, or write a positive comment. We read every one, and they are what keeps us going.
Read next: 007 First Light Passes 4 Million Copies Sold | CD Projekt Cuts Sirius While Witcher 4 Grows
