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Spectre Divide News

Spectre Divide shutting down six months after launch reminds us how hard it is to make a live-service game


Crikey, it's still looking rough out there in the industry at the moment, isn't it folks? Yesterday unfortunately brought the news that another online game is shutting down, with the studio alongside it. In this version of the story that we've heard all too often recently, it's Spectre Divide, a tactical free-to-play first-person shooter whose whole gimmick is that you control your own character and a clone, allowing you to switch between them on the fly.


It was certainly a fresh take on the genre, but our former reviews editor Ed did wonder if that was enough to set it apart from Valorant or Counter Strike. As evidenced by developer Mountaintop Studios' imminent closure only six months after the game launched, it was not.


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Letter To Spectre Fans

Dear Spectre Fans,

It’s been two weeks since we launched Spectre Divide Season 1: Flashpoint. We’re incredibly grateful for the positivity and support that you’ve shown over that short time.

Unfortunately, the Season 1 launch hasn’t achieved the level of success we needed to sustain the game and keep Mountaintop afloat.

We were optimistic about the first week. We’ve had ~400,000 players play, with a peak concurrent player count of ~10,000 across all platforms. But as time has gone on, we haven’t seen enough active players and incoming revenue to cover the day-to-day costs of Spectre and the studio.

Since the PC launch, we stretched our remaining capital as far as we could, but at this point, we're out of funding to support the game. This means Mountaintop will be closing its doors at the end of this week.

We expect to take Spectre offline within the next 30 days, but we plan on disabling new purchases and refunding money spent since Season 1 launch via the platforms. We’ll be following up with more information on this soon.

We pursued every avenue to keep going, including finding a publisher, additional investment, and/or an acquisition. In the end, we weren’t able to make it work. The industry is in a tough spot right now.

This is a painful update to share. We love Spectre, and we’re incredibly proud of what we built with this community.

From the entire team at Mountaintop, I want to thank the Spectre community for all your support these past few years. We’ve loved every minute, and we’re sincerely going to miss you. Special thanks to our incredible investors too, without which Spectre wouldn’t have been possible.

This has always been a passion project for us, born out of love for this genre. An indie team of insanely talented individuals who came together from around the world to build a game we believed in.

We wanted to deliver something innovative and original in a crowded genre that would bring friends together around unforgettable moments. We shook up the format, created a fresh art style and universe, and partnered with some of our heroes. All of us knew from the beginning that the odds were against us, but that's what we signed up for. It was never a surefire bet. We did it anyway.

We had a few tough stumbles out of the gate when we launched in Sept. But this team rallied and poured everything into tackling your critical feedback for Season 1. We made major changes and improvements to virtually every area of the game and brought the game to consoles. Even though it wasn’t enough to achieve financial success, this team fought tooth and nail and went down swinging.

Game development is full of twists, turns, and surprises, and the industry has changed dramatically since we started the project in 2020. Even though we missed the mark this time, we wouldn’t trade the journey for anything.

That’s all from us. See you out there.

– Nate & the Mountaintop team

Spectre Divide Update | March 6 | Hotfix Patch Notes

QUALITY OF LIFE
  • Performance improvements on sponsor select screen and loading into a map.
  • Changed iconography to better clarify that when you are using crossplay, you are only playing against other console players
BUG FIXES
  • Fixed an issue where Battle Pass weekly contracts displayed an incorrect number of days left
  • Fixed a rare occurrence where players are unable to swap to their Spectre's or throw their puck in certain situations.
  • Resolved many suspend/resume issues on Console
  • Resolved issues with entitlements not appearing properly in some cases
  • Various error fixes

Spectre Divide Update | March 4 | Patch Notes

GENERAL
  • Added My Legacy to the Career tab of the Main Menu
    • Your stats will be calculated based on matches played during Season 1
  • [PC] Added support for Steam Achievements
SOCIAL UPDATES
  • You’ll now receive a notification when you’re removed from a party
QUALITY OF LIFE
  • Streamlined the tutorial experience, so you can get into the action faster. This is the first of many planned tutorial changes based on your feedback
  • Sponsor equipment descriptions now reflect Season 1 balance updates
  • [Console] Improved network and client performance on PlayStation & Xbox
BUG FIXES
  • Fixed a bug where enemy icons on the minimap would sometimes show in the wrong location due to network latency
  • Fixed a bug where you were sometimes blocked from matchmaking if you tried to rejoin a party that you’d been kicked from
  • On Metro, fixed a bug that let you reach unintended areas on A Site
  • [PC] Fixed a bug where Sprint and Walk could be bound to the same key if you’d played before Season 1
  • Minor performance improvements
  • Fixed a number of rare crashes

Spectre Divide Season 1: Flashpoint is LIVE!

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SPECTRE DIVIDE: FLASHPOINT IS NOW LIVE!

Try the improved gunplay and movement, explore the new map of Canal, and try out the newest sponsor: Monark Tactical! Season 1 delivers an all-new Battle Pass, revamped buy menu and more!

Play FREE now to claim your free Cyberlord Melee from February 25 - 26!

Read more on everything coming in Season 1 here.