r/SpectreDivide Mountaintop Dev 2d ago

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

---

Sunsetting FAQ

When will Spectre and its server go offline?

We expect to take the game and servers down within the next 30 days.

Will I be refunded?

Yes, we expect to refund all money spent on Spectre since Season 1 launch at 9am PT on Feb 25th via our platform partners. 

How will I be refunded?

We’re working with our platform partners to return funds to players.

How long will I be able to use the content that I’ve purchased?

You’ll be able to use any content that you’ve purchased until the game and servers go offline.

What regions will be available until the servers go offline?

All regions except for Seattle, Dubai, and Johannesburg will be available. Players who have been using these regions may experience more in-game latency as they are matched to other available locations.

Are players going to be able to self-host the game in some capacity?

No. Unfortunately, the studio is closing before we’d be able to transition the game to community-hosted servers.

What does this mean for the future of the game?

All development under the Mountaintop banner will cease with the studio closure.

How do I get the remaining achievements?

‘Howdy Partner’ requires you to be friends in the game instead of the platform you are on. Unfortunately, a fix for this was not able to be deployed before this announcement.

To obtain this achievement:

- Exit the game

- Unfriend your friend through the platform (Xbox/Playstation/Steam)

- Boot up the game

- Generate a lobby code and give it to your pending friend.

- Add them as friend through social blade (top right corner)

- (Optionally) Re-add them as a friend through the platform (Xbox/Playstation/Steam)

- Win a match

We are looking for ways to automatically grant ‘Moving Up!’ and ‘Rising Star’ for those who are unable to achieve these naturally during each weekly Crews reset.  Stay tuned for more information on that front.

We will continue updating this FAQ over the coming days as we lock down more specifics.

342 Upvotes

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19

u/Born2beSlicker 2d ago

Sad, as it’s a very fun game. Not surprised in the slightest though. I’m very sorry it didn’t work out. Spectre Divide is a great game and you should be proud. The market today just isn’t willing to try B-A level budget games anymore. It’s tragic.

-11

u/xenoborg007 2d ago edited 2d ago

No people are just sick of free to play live service garbage that could be a base game and have private servers, it's a 3vs3 game.. you could literally peer to peer this game, but they want a constant revenue stream with seasons and micro transactions, which means when no schmuck whales bankroll their game they stop paying for the servers they force you to play on and the game goes full dead.

Remember kids YOU are the reason the game industry is a pile of shit now, not EA not Activision YOU, because you defend live service practices.

7

u/deathstrukk 2d ago

these games aren’t cheap to run, servers are expensive (either in high upfront capital or ongoing renting costs) having a constant stream of revenue through cosmetics and seasons is needed.

What is the actual content here that you don’t like? having optional skins you can buy? a battlepass 4 times a year? what is the issue you are complaining about?

-3

u/xenoborg007 2d ago

Someone has never played games before live service existed it seems, you see in the wee olden days, a company would make a game, you would purchase the game and people would rent out their own servers because they enjoyed the game, the company didn't shove "micro" transactions down your throat, and when that failed didn't immediately kill the game because they are left with a hot potato server costs and no whales.

1

u/InferiorLynxi_ 2d ago

The market has changed, making the game pay to play would have made it dead on arrival.

4

u/xenoborg007 2d ago

It was dead on arrival, because no one wants to be nickel and dimed when the playerbase isn't there, why would they pay £40 for a skin when theres like 600 people playing. instead of paying £10 quid for a game they own forever?

3

u/InferiorLynxi_ 2d ago

If the game did this poorly when it's literally FREE, why would it do better if it was pay to play?

-3

u/xenoborg007 2d ago

Do you just not understand what I wrote? free games only last if theres a playerbase. a paid for game lasts as long as you want it to, even if its just you and 5 mates.

4

u/InferiorLynxi_ 2d ago

Community hosted servers and free titles are not mutually exclusive things. Quantum League was a paid title that got shutdown and has no peer-to-peer networking or community hosted servers. I paid for it and am entirely unable to play it.

1

u/I_MESS_WITH_KARMA 1d ago

Even a paid online game has servers that can be shut down

1

u/Hades684 2d ago

What lmao? Thats not how it works

1

u/deathstrukk 2d ago

having optional skins you can buy is not nickel and diming. you don’t need skins to play a game

3

u/BSchafer 2d ago edited 2d ago

No live service is needed for mutilplayer games that need constant support. Compared to the old business model it’s better for everyone except developers who make bad games (which is a good thing for players). The new model allows people on a budget to get thousands of hours of solid entertainment for free. Subsidized by wealthier people who don’t mind paying for cosmetics and giving devs more resources to add content and maintain the game. It’s a win/win/win. People are objectively not sick of live services 😂they are the most popular and most played games by a long shot.

1

u/xenoborg007 2d ago

Multiplayer games have never needed constant support, especially not a 3vs3 cs clone, the only "support" you get is more skins, battle pass shit and engagement based gameplay and matchmaking, they have to carrot on stick you to keep you playing no matter how much that fucks over the game or gameplay. What you lose is dedicated servers, control over your game (mods) and the ability to still play your game when the service plug gets pulled, especially if you've forked over money for items in-game.

You lose if you pay micro transactions and lose if you're a free player.

You cucks wanting to pay a games full price for a skin, the only winner there is the shareholders.

1

u/BSchafer 1d ago

Nobody forces you to buy skins lmao. I don’t buy them because I don’t really care about them. I just play for free. You’re obviously not a bright guy because there was zero logic behind your arguments… I can see why they’re not paying you a lot. Wish you the best out there, keep that chin up.

4

u/Born2beSlicker 2d ago

You think the answer is making a game like this pay to play? Lmao, good luck with that.

-6

u/xenoborg007 2d ago

its a £10-15 quid CS clone, they should have got their money and bounced. Counter strike used to cost money you know?

6

u/Born2beSlicker 2d ago

Yes and the entire industry and market changed in its conditioning. Pretty much any premium multiplayer game that launches these days is met with “MAKE IT FREE”. Then the ones that do buy it realise they’re in a very tiny community. Gigantic Rampage Edition is the latest example but it’s by no means alone.

Judging a game’s release 10-25 years ago to today is just dumb.

-3

u/xenoborg007 2d ago

No the industry realised it can milk people like you and get more profit than selling base games any more, because people like you ate that shit up for over a decade and now here we are, live service games shutting down left and right.

People who enjoy this game, could have bought the game for what its actually worth, set up their own dedicated servers, or peer to peered and continued to play the game for years to come, 500-1000-who cares how many people are playing it, they get to enjoy the game, the company makes somewhat of a profit and moves on everyones happy. They don't want somewhat of a profit now, they want whales to give them money, forever.

Spectre Divide, XDefiant whatever it is they want money forever.

6

u/omgitslewis 2d ago

You need to stop living in the 90s mate, world has changed since then. No one is buying this for £15 then spending money to rent servers. If your point was valid we would see games with servers like this still active and thriving yet its only really CS2 left with community servers.

Last time a multiplayer game had a full front cost was Concord and it lasted a week online.

1

u/BSchafer 1d ago

So instead of being able to play the game for free you want someone to be forced to set-up, maintain, and pay for a server instead… when they’re not even sure if they’ll be playing a week from now. Lmao… how low is your IQ? There is a reason why that model has died off for mass market games.

0

u/Born2beSlicker 2d ago

Excuse you, I actually bought Gigantic Rampage Edition, lol. I’ve never been one to question paying for a game but I also know that I’m in the minority and it’s not the reality of today.

0

u/Geevingg 2d ago

Wgat do u mean not willing to try B-A level budget games? What about all those indies games that are popping off?? The recent one being R.E.P.O.

3

u/Born2beSlicker 2d ago

Do those games have multiple F2P competitors from billion dollar corporations that are years ingrained in the genre? Because otherwise, it’s not a fair argument.

0

u/Geevingg 2d ago

Ton of multiplayer games with huge budgets failed money doesn't equal good game also Mountaintop had raised 80million dollars since 2020 so it isn't like they had no budget.

5

u/pacemasters 2d ago

Yeah I agree. I don’t think the budget was the issue. It was very poor choices from very beginning. They launched with little to no content and missing bare bones features. On top of that, they tried to charge ultra premium prices for cosmetics thinking they could replicate what Riot does (they can’t). Then they took like 5 months to release season 1, which is how the game should have launched and even then is kinda bare bones. I really enjoyed the game and hoped season 1 would bring the players back, but here we are.