Portal-based Shooter Splitgate Gets $6.5 Million In Funding

Remember Splitgate: Arena Warfare? The free-to-play title was a blend of Valve's Portal with shooter mechanics, offering players the chance to teleport around an arena and come at opponents from unexpected angles. It launched two years ago -- on this exact day, as it turns out -- but, following an initially strong debut, its player numbers sharply fell off, though there's been a recent uptick.

Something else that's going up is its creators' bank accounts. VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi is reporting that developer 1047 Games has secured $6.5 million in funding for the game, coming from four entities, with Galaxy Interactive leading the way. The funds will be used "to substantially increase the production of in-game content and ramp up marketing efforts to get new players," as well as bring on new developers, potentially expanding to "40 or 50 people."

Splitgate, which was developed from CEO Ian Proulx's dorm room -- number 1047, thus giving rise to the company's name -- had 600,000 downloads in its first month. Proulx said that while Splitgate is his #1 priority, the team does have "future game ideas that we want to pursue at some point."