Squeezed in between his controversial appearance at the Summer Game Fest wearing a MAGA-style "Make FPS Great Again" hat and his subsequent apology for it, Splitgate 2 boss Ian Proulx couldn't help himself from slipping a quick knock against a former Call of Duty developer—and former Splitgate 2 developer—in a video on X.
It was posted on June 8 to explain how the $80 store bundle—which was halved in price after fans criticized it—had happened in the first place. Proulx recalled what happened after his SGF appearance: "The second I got off that stage, I called Darek [Jones], our lead game designer, and I said, 'Darek, did you know we had an $80 bundle? This is news to me. What the heck? That makes no sense.'
"Essentially what happened is our 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 the pricing," he said.
Speaking to IGN, Proulx said the remark about the former Call of Duty developer, which also happens to be the main FPS series he claims is souring the genre, was "a funny coincidence, but a hundred percent the truth."
Proulx went on to explain in the video that the team "reevaluated everything a month ago," and lowered the prices from those reportedly set by the monetization head, but missed the $80 bundle because "unfortunately, things slip through the cracks."
Coming from the guy who wore a hat inspired by a Donald Trump slogan to "break through the noise" of all the games at SGF, I'm not surprised he threw a former employee under the bus in the same video where he admits it was an oversight on his part. Taking responsibility seems to be something Proulx's learning in real time.
He wrote in a Reddit AMA on Wednesday that he "didn't intend for it to come off as shifting blame," and that the "honest truth though is I was unaware of the $80 bundle and would never have allowed it to go live."
Proulx says he was too focused on server stability during the beta and that there weren't ways to check the store before it went live. "Going forward, I have set up meetings every Monday with our new product manager Matt (who is awesome) and Darek our lead game designer (also awesome) to make sure I have visibility of everything going live in the store and playlists that week, so that this doesn't happen again."
