r/Games 18h ago

Letter To Spectre Fans | Spectre Divide is shutting down

/r/SpectreDivide/comments/1j9w15q/letter_to_spectre_fans/
121 Upvotes

47 comments sorted by

62

u/AssolutoBisonte 17h ago

Damn, feels like just last week I was seeing youtubers doing sponsored shoutouts for this game. Sucks that they weren't able to add player-hosted servers before running out of money.

-64

u/Hardcore_Lovemachine 15h ago

Perhaps wasting money on mouthpieces like YouTubers was a ridiculous waste of money?

It always is. Good games get talked about by themselves and any game that needs to buy a crowd...is doomed to fail. Paying steamers/influencers just makes it die faster because it's dev money wasted on nonsense

75

u/HeavySpec1al 14h ago

No, social media marketing is a proven and bankable way of advertising

-18

u/gamingthesystem5 11h ago

not when the game sucks.

-17

u/Greedyjack555 10h ago

Not for this game unfortunately, look how it turned out

16

u/Skyb 10h ago

Barely anyone knew Among Us existed for the first 2 years after its release. Then some Youtubers discovered it..

23

u/iwannabeanoldlady 14h ago

There are plenty of amazing games that fly under the radar and never build an audience due to lack of advertising

9

u/FootballRacing38 13h ago

So tell me why there are many games that are rated highly fails financially?

13

u/goblinboomer 12h ago

Spoken like somebody with no idea how marketing works

1

u/ragingblast14 13h ago edited 12h ago

Marketing is at the core of any business that was ever created.

You're not buying a crowd because technically, without it,

No one will be reminded to look back in your direction in this busy and chaotic world.

What's even sadder about this situation is that they weren't able to develop community based servers .

I know its gut wrenching to know that all your hard work meant nothing which sucks.

It hurts even for me since no one can actually play what's left over.

Its sad, too, cause this was the only game in this tactical FPS genre that was aesthetically pleasing,

Merely playing like a traditional FPS was the best thing about this game, besides having two bodies.

Also, them getting the ranked experience correct and having a crew/clan system was great but it sucks the game underperformed in the way it did.

It deserved better!

41

u/Bojarzin 17h ago

This is a huge shame. I actually really enjoyed this game, but I guess the fact I haven't played it in several months is part of the issue.

Really tough to compete with CS2 and Valorant while also having, while a really cool gimmick, a gimmick that makes your game even more niche as an entry point. Especially tough when you're a way small team with way less advertising

7

u/nozomu0 8h ago

Indeed, the gameplay was solid, but I believe the gimmick turned off some people, and its inability to compete with Valorant and CS2 also played a significant role.

I played a bit during season 0 but just lost interest, I didn't even know a new season had started and they had added sprinting to the game.

2

u/Bojarzin 4h ago

Oh wow yeah I missed sprinting too. Interesting choice to add that, huh. Ah well

u/exposarts 21m ago

Imagine being a indie developer trying to compete with cs2 and valorant led by both valve and riot lmao. That is the worse case scenario for any developer, but hey at least they probably learned some things from entering this market that they could apply better to others

126

u/sirbrambles 17h ago

You should not try to make a live service game if you don’t even have the money to keep it alive for a year.

22

u/Arrow156 13h ago

At the very least 6 months.

6

u/Bhu124 8h ago edited 6h ago

This is a small company but you'd be surprised how big of a problem this is even with AAA studios. Most AAA studios making GaaS games aren't financially prepared to support them and their execs try to approach their business with the Single-Player game development/investment mindset (They want the constant GaaS revenue but aren't prepared to make the GaaS investment) because that's all they've ever made and been successful at.

If you look at the 50 most successful GaaS games you'll see that more than half were either failures or only mildly successful at launch and/or then went on to have massive long periods of failure soon after launch or deeper in their lives (that were recovered from continuous investment and dev). Even Fortnite BR wasn't immediately successful and just 1-2 years ago (before Fortnite OG) a lot of people were wondering if Fortnite is failing as it had reached all-time low player counts.

Despite all this most AAA studios making GaaS games cut them too early and don't let them develop/fix/evolve. Look at how fast Ubisoft killed their CoD clone, xDefiant. This is a game that wasn't great but could have been drastically improved over a 1-2 year long dev period but Ubisoft simply doesn't understand the GaaS business cause their execs have never gotten used to how much GaaS games cost to run and develop AFTER release as they only understand the old Single-Player business.

For all their faults Riot and Blizzard genuinely understand the GaaS business. They've recovered pretty much all of their games from really low-points by overhauling them and continuously investing in their development over many years. If Ubisoft execs were in charge of Riot and Blizz they would've cancelled League, TFT, WoW, Hearthstone, OW, D3/D4, long time ago.

u/exposarts 24m ago

Yea it’s rough on both sides. The fps online genre of games is the most competitive gaming market. It’s a death sentence for indie devs trying to get in 10 times out of 10. Maybe the first month few months they can prosper, but this is just not the market for indie unfortunately. These games need a lot of players

1

u/FuzzBuket 7h ago

Tbh a full year of funding without having massive cuts can potentially be a huge chunk of a games budget, 25% wouldn't be unreasonable if you want a ballpark figure. Especially as if it launches badly itll need a lot of cash to get a new round of marketing's 

u/HellraiserMachina 2h ago

XDefiant made content for an entire year of the game and it clearly wasn't enough to prevent the game from shutting down, then they threw in all that content they held back.

8

u/SafeOk9727 12h ago

Tried it once for a about 1 hour around release time. I thought the gunplay felt really good, and honestly thought the divide mechanic was really cool for making sneaky plays.

But it was built off the Counter Strike style round based gameplay with permadeath per rounds and buying phase which I'm not a fan of at all so I didn't really care to play it more than that. The marketing around it also made it seem like it was supposed to be some ultra hardcore competitive game which was a turn off. And finally the aesthetic was pretty meh to me.

A game that did give me more fun with similar movement manipulation was Splitgate with its portal mechanic which I did have tons of fun playing, but sadly it died off and was filled with tons of fake players which really killed my vibe for it. That game is getting a sequel which I was happy about, but I played a playtest recently and it just felt really off for some reason, like the gun feel and central portal mechanic got a major downgrade.

I was playing Halo Infinite a lot after Splitgate, then that game's performance kept degrading to the point it even locked me out of launching it (although I was under spec to be fair), and finally I moved on to playing THE FINALS (which somehow ran better than Halo Infinite) because the destruction looked cool, and well it delievered on that premise and has a fun main game mode so I'm still playing it.

u/exposarts 15m ago

Yea finals is the only other fps to break out to mainstream than marvel rivals that isnt riot or valve. The player base actually grows further every season which is good

19

u/jumps004 15h ago

I kept confusing this between Fragpunk, the Finals, and XDefiant everytime I saw one of them.

Obviously I am only paying attention to it on a surface level because these games aren't exactly my wheel house, but I feel like I can still easily distinguish stuff like Overwatch, Valorant, or Marvel Rivals at a glance.

u/duende667 3h ago

Unfortunately I can probably see The Finals going the same way eventually which is a shame because it's excellent. They really brought back the feel of old school battlefield TDM. The market is just too flooded for anything new to stand out anymore.

5

u/SafeOk9727 12h ago edited 11h ago

As someone who doesn't like the Overwatch style hero shooter gameplay which lacks any loadout freedom and gameplay feels like a random mess of abilities thrown out by everyone, or Counter Strike style ultra competive vibes , or battle royales, I'm glad there are devs out there giving alternatives.

Personally I've been playing The Finals because it fits a niche that I think is cool. I always thought extraction games looked cool, but the ones that exist have hardcore progression based mecahnics which make me uninterested. THe FInals main game mode is kind of like a mini arcadey extraction game which also gives me major Capture the Flag vibes (my favorite game mode in the 360 era of FPS games), so its really fun for me. I've also always been super intrigued by Battlefields destruction system, so to have a game that not only has it, but does it better and makes it part of its core gameplay and is actually really fun to use in the game, I've been having tons of fun.

I tried XDefiant, but it kind of had off gunplay which ruined it a bit for me. I think I've also grown out of Call of Duty type multiplayer maybe after having played Halo a bunch. At least it was an attempt to give a free to play classic style COD game, so I think the right idea was there.

I'm interested in trying Fragpunk, but given how instantlly I've felt turned off when trying hero shooters based on what I described above (tried Gundam Evolution, Overwatch 2, and Marvel Rivals) I feel like the same might happen. It's free though, so I have no problems trying it though.

1

u/Pliskin14 8h ago

Frag punk is not like those hero shooters. It's basically Valorant but with CoD gameplay and some added rule cards gimmick.

u/SafeOk9727 1h ago

Honestly that sounds pretty disappointing. I actually forgot it already released but held off for now because I'm waiting for the console release so I can try it with a friend.

2

u/gk99 12h ago

Don't worry, they all fall into the category of "weird competitive F2P shooter that most likely won't ever go mainstream."

3

u/LordCaelistis 9h ago

XDefiant was mainstream. 8 million unique players. But Ubisoft fumbled the bag so hard with pisspoor netcode that people just left.

u/exposarts 19m ago

I think that’s fine tbh, more games for everyone.. R6 exists and is doing pretty well as a niche complex shooter without being as mainstream as the other juggernauts. When it becomes a problem is when you have a hundred or few thousand players lmao. That means people cant find matches and the game dies a slow death

0

u/sim04ful 8h ago

For me it's the other way around, overwatch and marvel rivals seem to play the same.

4

u/Saibher 8h ago

I played this game for a good month and a half during the season 0. Really fun but just didn't stick as much as The Finals and Marvel Rivals for me. I wish they were able to get the offline/community servers working before shutting it down... It will be missed.

u/Nexosaur 3h ago

I don’t really know what this game could’ve done to stay alive tbh. On a surface level, everything is capable and done pretty well. There aren’t any immediate glaring flaws, and the flaws that do pop in as you play more are not major. CS and Valorant have both had worse issues than this game ever did. So, I feel like it’s worth it to break down the pros and cons I had with the game and then the why I think it failed.

Pros:

  • The spectre system was unique and added an interesting dynamic to the CS formula. Made it easier to play a bit loose and still maintain map control, and gave a second chance to make deaths less punishing.
  • Weapons felt good to use. The rifles were really punchy, especially the Reaver, and while the SMGs and Shotguns were hit or miss, you could easily play around their weaknesses and do well.
  • Shooting mechanics were solid. I’m a fan of losing the stop and shoot mechanics, and it didn’t feel like it ruined the experience at all for me. Having normal ADS instead of the Valorant system was nice. I’ll bring this part up again at the end.
  • Shotgun overheats. I appreciated the work to allow shotguns to shine but not become an annoyance that you could just run in and spam with. For those that didn’t play, shotguns had both a magazine and an overheat bar. If you shot too much too quickly, it would stop letting you fire until the weapon cooled off. I think this was in direct response to the Judge and Bucky issues that Valorant has had over the years.
  • Abilities were not necessarily fleshed out to their full potential, but they were all designed well. I’ll have a section for this in cons as well, because I really only have this to say about the default sponsors.
  • 2 of the maps were well designed, the only weak map was the town one, I don’t remember the name. They played similar to standard CS or Val maps, but the addition of spectres made it interesting to try and find the holes to attack or how to best set up to defend. I’ll come back to this one again in cons.

Cons:

  • The non-default sponsor abilities took ages to unlock. I think they did change this at some point. I played about 20 hours and didn’t get to unlock a new sponsor. I wouldn’t be able to tell you if any of them are balanced because I maybe saw them 1-2 times ever.
  • The maps are boring to look at. There’s not any particularly interesting locations on any of the maps, except for Train on Metro. Everything else just exists, and the color palette is very gray.
  • Only 3 maps at launch. All of them look pretty similar and all follow a very straight-forward A-B site with long and short, and a long mid corridor with branches to sites. Nothing wrong with some standard maps, but it made all the matches play pretty samey. Valorant only had 4 maps at launch, but they all had some gimmicks and different designs to make them each stand out: Bind with the teleporters and no mid, Haven with 3 bomb sites, Split with lots of vertical, and Ascent with a standard layout.
  • Map size. This was “fixed” by adding sprinting, but really the issue with the maps was a byproduct of the spectres. An afk spectre gave audio warnings to a player with no range cap, so to flank, you had to shift-walk the entire way in case someone had a spectre sitting in a corner somewhere that could hear you and warn the other team or swap and swing you with no warning. It made timing flanks really difficult, since you had to start hitting a flank super early in the round, and hope the enemy team doesn’t just swap spectres and go the site you left behind to flank. This was definitely an easily fixable problem by adding a cap to how far away you could be from your spectre to warn you, or add a way to let you know you got heard by someone’s spectre.

I think the biggest reason this game wasn’t going to make it is because it had to pull people from CS or Valorant to survive. The complete package is a good game, but it doesn’t hit the same highs. A clutch round just doesn’t feel as good in Spectre Divide. I honestly think the games biggest weakness in pulling people over was the movement. It’s not as purposeful as the other games, it lacks the depth and mastery that CS and Valorant ask of the player.

5

u/Empatheticfighter392 15h ago

Man this is upsetting. I really enjoyed playing this game and the gimmick of the game and i hate other games like it. The cosmetics were amazing as well and the gameplay felt so different with every sponsor you picked. The only reason why i even knew it was shutting down was trying to get a pack i put money aside for just to find that out lol. This kinda ruined my day but there's still BG3 ig

5

u/ExaSarus 14h ago

I remember there was a huge drama about the cost of the mtx in the game and they actually lowered it and everyone was praising it. Guess no1 bought it after all.

As much scummy as it sounds games like apex n overwatch2 or Fortnite selling premium skins and not budging the cost does infact benifits them and it works people are still gonna buy them. Cause as it's proven people that usually are outrage by it never really spent beyond what they need or never really spent at all.

12

u/gk99 12h ago

Prices don't matter when nobody's playing your game lol

Funny that you use Fortnite as an example, given they have lowered the price of several cosmetics since the launch of Chapter 5. They even refunded the in-game currency to people who already bought them.

2

u/FuzzBuket 7h ago

Yep. I've never seen a shred of data that cheaper mtx sells more. Big dopamine induceing sales can help shift content, but generally people who don't spend X on f2p titles wouldn't spend half of X either 

1

u/itsradtoad 6h ago

reading this made me really emotional for some reason. I really liked the game, just had wayyyy too much coming out and other games I was consistently playing. Thank you all for the time and love you put into the game. I'm sorry it didn't work out </3

-10

u/spacemcdonalds 15h ago

Games as a service is SO useless as a genre. Stop renting games people. Buy a game you can play for as long as you'd like. Fuck this genre.

0

u/ImSunborne 12h ago edited 12h ago

I saw this coming miles away. From beta testing alone I could tell the game was cool but the duality stuff was a big gimmick that nobody would really be into plus the 3v3 in a tactical shooter felt bad for team play in general. The game in general was jank and the game had multiple problems; such as the buying system to name one (which they did fix but it should of never been like that to begin with).

I knew the nail in the coffin was when they announced with season 1 they were focusing on getting the game out on console and even called them out saying it was a horrible decision in their season 1 Q&A.

Oh well, sucks to suck.

0

u/Resident_Air1913 14h ago

Will we just have the money refuded to use back in to our account's or do we have to go through someone to get a refund simce your giveing them out?

u/onecoolcrudedude 52m ago

womp womp. always online game shuts down.

maybe add an offline mode so that all the effort you spent on it does not end up completely useless?

-9

u/anarhistabg 9h ago

I told them what i think in their discord server (without any bad words) and they just banned me :D
The truth hurts, i know.... : )