Spectre Divide Closes Weeks After Season 1, Despite Prior Confidence

The competitive battle royale game Spectre Divide that follows the free-to-play model introduced its inaugural season, Flashpoint, on February 25th. While its considerable collaboration with pro-gamer Shroud and the intriguing “Duality” feature seemed promising, Mountaintop Studio’s expectations weren’t met.

To be candid, the game’s initial release on early access back in September wasn’t promising either. The team’s monetization scheme was poorly received by players, with some even labeling it as “delusional”. As I highlighted in my detailed review, the game’s cash shop tendencies represented all that’s wrong with the F2P model. Such actions are not confined to Spectre Divide, but it’s critical for a self-publishing small-scale developer to avoid such pitfalls. Claiming that your game will be a “10,000-hour obsession” for players but failing to deliver certainly doesn’t help.

Spectre Divide initiated its first season two weeks ago, marking its console debut. Mountaintop Studio desperately needed this launch to succeed, as they had hinted at their dwindling player base (but assured the game was here to stay) and pushed back the season’s release to resolve certain technical issues that arose during the early access phase, aiming for “the best possible reopening“.

It seems the studio is already aware that this season’s launch won’t suffice.

In a post on the Spectre Divide website, Mountaintop expressed early optimism with a spike in the first week’s player count. But the second week brought disappointment as game revenues fell short of supporting both itself and the company, having exhausted any remaining resources. Mountaintop, unable to secure a new publisher or partner amidst a struggling industry, will have to cease operations next week.

All purchases made after the launch of Season 1 across all platforms will be fully refunded, and the game will shut down within a month.

To be honest, it’s astonishing how quickly everything seems to have fallen apart. I wouldn’t be surprised if company leaders saw this coming despite their evident enthusiasm for the project. Given that two weeks into the season, both the game and studio are now on the verge of closure, it’s likely they were nearing this point several months ago. From my perspective, if you’re giving a season just two weeks to “rescue” your game, then it never really stood a chance in the first place.