‘Spectre Divide’ Will Shut Down Less Than One Year After Release After Receiving $30M In Investment
by Anna Cheek
Spectre Divide (Image: Mountaintop Studios)
Mountaintop Studios’ free-to-play tactical shooter game, Spectre Divide, is shutting down less than a year after its release despite having received $30 million for investment funding.
In August 2024, Spectre Divide launched on Steam, and though the concept of the game was appealing, it was met with difficulties immediately. The game was a free-to-play, three-versus-three tactical shooter game that set itself apart from the others by allowing players to play as two characters at once on the battlefield with the ability to swap between characters mid-game.
Though the concept was unique and Spectre Divide definitely made a lot of fans, it received heavily mixed reviews on Steam and still sits with a rating of 6/10. Furthermore, the game suffered from server issues at launch and backlash from players after Mountaintop Studios was selling skins for $90.
So here we are seven months after launch as Mountaintop Studios’s CEO Nate Mitchell announces that Spectre Divide is officially shutting down. “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,” he wrote. “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.” Despite the sad news, it should be a bit of a relief for gamers to know they will be refunded for purchases made since Season 1.
Mountaintop Studios received a $30 million investment towards developing Spectre Divide in Jan. 2024 before the game’s completion, but as Mitchell said, not even this turned out to be enough to sustain the game past the launch of its first season on consoles or even into a full year of play. Mitchell said that Mountaintop was “optimistic about the first week” when they accrued around 400,000 players, but there since have not been “enough active players and incoming revenue to cover the day-to-day costs of Spectre and the studio.”
This is a big blow to Spectre Divide fans considering the potential that the game had, but as Mitchell said, “The industry is in a tough spot right now.” He concluded his message saying “This is a painful update to share, We love Spectre, and we’re incredibly proud of what we built with this community.”
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