Stop messing with team deathmatch

Long ago, the pioneers of digital shooting pitted two teams against each other in a contest to earn the most frags. Thus, the perfect game mode was born.

When an FPS features team deathmatch at or near the top of its playlists, that’s the crucial clue that you’re playing a good videogame. The mode’s popularity has waned in our current era of battle royale and extraction, so it’s nice that some newer shooters (that aren’t Call of Duty) are keeping pure multiplayer fragging alive.

Well, almost pure fragging. Splitgate 2 and The Finals recently debuted their takes on team deathmatch, both coincidentally featuring the same tweak to the format: What if TDM had rounds?

Let’s set aside the obvious “why” for the moment and absorb the idea. What Splitgate 2 and The Finals have essentially done is take a bog-standard TDM format, which typically has a score limit of 75-100 depending on the game, and sliced it into chunks with smaller score limits. First team to win two rounds takes the match. In The Finals, rounds are 30 kills each. In Splitgate 2, they’re even shorter at 25.

I’ve played several rounds of both now, and while the deathmatch part is great fun in both games, the rounds thing is a total miss. The constant starting and stopping to reset the map and assess who’s in the lead creates this uniquely frustrating dynamic where rounds feel too short, but matches feel too long.

Every time I’m getting into a groove with the map and my loadout, bam, the round ends. Then you gotta wait for everyone to pick their weapons again, then you wait for the countdown, and only then can you play the game again.

I suppose the idea is to add stakes to the scoreboard or mitigate snowballing, but TDM is not the place to worry about competitive integrity. It’s an excuse to let loose—a venue for mindless bloodshed.

I worry that Embark Studios and 1047 Games have misunderstood the beauty of team deathmatch: It’s the only mode where you never need to pay attention to the scoreboard, because as long as you’re trying to get kills, you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do. Brain turn off, point mouse at head, help team. I do not care about the outcome of an inherently casual FPS mode more just because it’s a best-of-three. It’s just a slower, more frustrating deathmatch.

That’s not to suggest a round-based TDM isn’t a valid variant, but it’s a poor substitute for the original. You need a dead-simple bedrock mode like TDM to serve as a landing pad for groups coming off a stressful round of Splitball (Splitgate’s CTF) or Ranked Tournament (The Finals’ sweatiest mode). Rounds just don’t scream “chill.”

If lots of people feel the same way, I believe both games will make good on traditional TDM in the future. Splitgate 2’s devs have been upfront about its plans to rotate in featured modes alongside core ones (unfortunately, the open beta is still offline as I write this), and The Finals only recently began experimenting with 5v5.