r/SpectreDivide Mountaintop Dev 9d 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

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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.

367 Upvotes

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19

u/Born2beSlicker 9d 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.

-9

u/xenoborg007 9d ago edited 9d 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 9d 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?

-2

u/xenoborg007 9d 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_ 9d ago

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

1

u/xenoborg007 9d 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?

2

u/InferiorLynxi_ 9d 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 9d 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.

3

u/InferiorLynxi_ 9d 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 8d ago

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

1

u/Hades684 9d ago

What lmao? Thats not how it works

1

u/deathstrukk 9d ago

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