"Spectre Divide: Free Shooter Closes Weeks Post-Console Launch"

The free-to-play 3v3 shooter, Spectre Divide, is facing an unexpected shutdown just six months after its debut in September 2024, and shortly following its release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The game's developer, Mountaintop Studios, is also closing its doors. Mountaintop CEO Nate Mitchell confirmed this disheartening news via a statement shared on social media, explaining that the Season 1 launch did not meet the necessary success metrics to sustain the game or keep the studio operational.

"Unfortunately, the Season 1 launch hasn’t achieved the level of success we needed to sustain the game and keep Mountaintop afloat," Mitchell stated. Despite an optimistic start with around 400,000 players and a peak concurrent count of 10,000 across all platforms during the first week, the game struggled to retain enough active players and generate sufficient revenue to cover operational costs. The post elaborated, "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."

Mountaintop Studios explored various options to keep the game running, including seeking a publisher, additional investment, and potential acquisition, but ultimately, none of these avenues proved successful. Mitchell noted the challenging state of the gaming industry, saying, "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."

Spectre Divide will be taken offline within the next 30 days, and Mountaintop Studios has committed to refunding any money spent by players since the Season 1 launch. This decision contradicts earlier statements from October 2024, where Mitchell assured that "the servers aren’t shutting down, and the updates aren’t going to stop," and claimed that Mountaintop had "the funds to support Spectre for a long time."

Spectre Divide Combat

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IGN’s positive preview of Spectre Divide in August 2024 praised the game's tactical 3v3 gameplay, particularly highlighting its unique Duality system, which allowed players to control two characters during matches. However, the rapid shutdown of Spectre Divide follows a troubling trend of other live-service games faltering, including Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Sony’s Concord.