There’s a line in showbiz that goes, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Ian Proulx, CEO of Splitgate 2 developer 1047 Games, 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 America 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. 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 be controversial. 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 clashes between people protecting their neighbors and defenders of a cruel regime.
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 worker 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 themselves.
Proulx’s statement, no matter its form, isn’t just in bad taste. It is a stark reminder to those people that their lives and families are at risk. And saying “I’m sorry, it was just a meme” isn’t enough.
