1047 Games announced a $100 million funding round on September 14, 2021, at a stated $1.5 billion pre-money valuation. The news followed Splitgate’s rapid open-beta growth: the company said the free-to-play shooter had passed 13 million downloads in less than two months. Those downloads were a measure of cumulative uptake, not a count of active players—and the announcement does not establish that downloads alone caused the investment or determined the valuation.
What 1047 Games announced
The studio said Lightspeed Venture Partners led the $100 million round. Participating firms named in the announcement included Insight Partners, Anthos Capital, Galaxy Interactive, VGames, Human Capital, Lakestar, DraperDragon and Draper University. 1047 Games said it planned to use the funding to develop Splitgate, hire staff and pursue its broader goal of making distinctive games. 1047 Games’ September 14, 2021 announcement called the valuation pre-money; it should not be described as a post-money valuation.
Lightspeed described the investment as a Series A in its account of the investment. The round amount and valuation are figures announced by the company, not independently audited figures established by the sources cited here.
How to read the Splitgate audience figures
The 13 million figure refers to downloads during Splitgate’s 2021 open-beta surge. It does not mean 13 million people were playing at once, or that all downloads represented unique or currently active players.
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| Figure | What it measures | Attribution and time window |
|---|---|---|
| More than 13 million | Downloads | 1047 Games said the total was reached in less than two months after the open beta began that summer, in its September 14, 2021 announcement. |
| More than 13 million | Downloads | Lightspeed said the game passed this level in the month since the console beta launch; its wording describes a different time window. |
| 200,000 | Peak concurrent players across PC, PlayStation and Xbox | Lightspeed’s 2021 investment account; this is a peak simultaneous-player figure, not a download total. |
| Around 600,000 | Downloads in the first month of the original MVP | Reported by TechCrunch on September 14, 2021; this is not a company-issued figure in the cited account. |
| More than 10 million | Downloads during July’s multiplatform relaunch | Reported by TechCrunch on September 14, 2021; this is not the same measurement window as the company’s less-than-two-month total. |
The company and investor figures both describe a breakout in 2021, but their published windows are not identical. TechCrunch’s earlier figures add context to the growth trajectory; they should not be added to the later totals as if they measured separate, non-overlapping groups of players. TechCrunch’s September 14, 2021 report attributes the MVP and relaunch figures to its reporting.
Why investors highlighted the game
Splitgate combined free-to-play arena-shooter combat with player-controlled portals that let players move through the map in unusual ways. The founder described the game as drawing on Halo and Portal, while TechCrunch situated it among arena shooters such as Quake 3, Unreal Tournament and Halo. These are descriptions of the game’s influences and design, not independent claims about its quality.
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In the company announcement, CEO and co-founder Ian Proulx said, “Building on our core success with Splitgate is our main focus in the immediate future – we are rapidly scaling across all areas of our studio.” Lightspeed partner Amy Wu framed the investment around founders pursuing ambitious innovation and building a potential next-generation platform. Together with the audience figures, those comments explain the opportunity investors described; they do not prove that any one metric set the valuation.
TechCrunch reported that Proulx described the business model as earning revenue through cosmetic items and optional perks. That helps explain how a free-to-play title could be a commercial opportunity, but the announcement did not disclose revenue, profitability or a breakdown of the round’s valuation methodology.
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What happened later—and what it does not tell us
In an August 31, 2026 report, PC Gamer said 1047 Games announced that dedicated-server and matchmaking support for Splitgate: Arena Reloaded and Empulse would end on September 3, 2026, because revenue did not cover dedicated-server costs. PC Gamer reported that peer-to-peer play would remain. This later update concerns those named games and services; it does not revise the 2021 financing terms or establish the original Splitgate’s current service status. PC Gamer’s August 31, 2026 report quoted the studio’s Steam update on the server-cost rationale.
For the original Splitgate’s present availability, the cited 2026 report is not a current service-status check. The 2021 funding story is therefore best understood on its own terms: a $100 million round announced at a stated $1.5 billion pre-money valuation during a period of extraordinary reported download growth.
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