Spectre Divide: Free Shooter Closes Weeks After Console Debut

The free-to-play 3v3 shooter, Spectre Divide, is set to be discontinued just six months after its debut in September 2024, and shortly after its release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The game's developer, Mountaintop Studios, is also facing closure.

Mountaintop's CEO, Nate Mitchell, officially announced the news via a social media statement today. He explained, "Unfortunately, the Season 1 launch hasn’t achieved the level of success we needed to sustain the game and keep Mountaintop afloat."

Spectre Divide Combat

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Despite an initial optimistic outlook after the first week, with the game drawing in around 400,000 players and a peak concurrent player count of approximately 10,000 across all platforms, the numbers dwindled over time. Mitchell's statement further 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."

The team at Mountaintop Studios explored various avenues to continue operations, including seeking a publisher, additional investment, or a potential acquisition, but to no avail. Mitchell noted, "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 any expenditures made by players since the Season 1 launch will be refunded.

This development contradicts earlier reports from October 2024, where Mitchell had 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."

IGN's August 2024 preview of Spectre Divide had praised the game's tactical 3v3 gameplay and its innovative Duality system, which allowed players to control two characters during matches. However, the quick shutdown of the game follows a trend of other unsuccessful live-service titles, such as Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Sony’s Concord.