Spectre Divide, a highly touted free-to-play 3v3 tactical shooter, is officially shutting down—along with its developer, Mountaintop Studios. Only six months after its September 2024 launch and just weeks after releasing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, the game is being shut down for poor player retention and financial issues.
The internet did not take long to clown on the matter. Some people are joking the devs didn't even give the game a try before rage-quitting, but others are pretty sure this was just a pricey money-laundering drill.
Meanwhile, the "not shocked" camp is chiming in that the game was mid to begin with and they saw this coming.
In either case, the memes reign supreme.
An X user (@lauracarolinese) went on to ask:
"They gave it just 2 weeks???"
Infamous gym memberships last longer than this.
A user (@optifyy_) commented:
"they gave it 2 weeks?💀 ts died faster than multiverses."
A user (@Angelica_Reed1) speculated:
"marvel rivals killed everything else in the genre 😭."
Poking fun, a user (@Siggyv) asked:
"Is this the Shroud game that all of a sudden wasn't a Shroud game anymore?"
Shroud was involved for about as long as our New Year’s resolutions.
One user (@sakura_venom) joked:
"Damn, dropped faster than my situationships 😭💔"
Both lasted about the same time, but only one cost millions.
A user (@inhuman) declared:
"The game was terrible and devs were charging $60 for skin bundles like they were Valorant."
Imagine paying $60 for a skin just to watch the game disappear in two weeks.
A user (@ProRebornYT) mentioned:
"This industry is absolute professionals at burning cash."
Meanwhile, a user (@hazeykthx) said:
"I hate seeing games shutdown and studios close but c'mon just one look at the trailer and you could see this coming from a mile away."
They could’ve saved millions by just watching the comments section.
Spectre Divide and Mountaintop Studios closed
Mountaintop Studios, which consisted of experienced industry veterans from firms such as Respawn, Epic, Riot, and Bungie, was struck with bad financial woes.
As much as the studio tried to make its remaining limited funds last, it could not pay for the daily expense of keeping Spectre Divide running and running the company.
CEO Nate Mitchell also added that the studio tried everything to keep going, including looking for a new publisher, more investment, or acquisition, but all of these attempts were unsuccessful.
“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.”
Mitchell also spoke about the general problems with the gaming industry, saying:
"The industry is in a tough spot right now".
Early success and downfall (KW missing?)
Spectre Divide started well with around 400,000 players in its initial week and boasted a peak online player count of around 10,000 for all platforms.
Initial hype was not long-lived, however.
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With new game mechanics like the Duality mechanic where two players could play a single game with two different characters simultaneously, the game still couldn't retain players.
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By February, concurrent player counts of Spectre Divide dropped drastically, never more than 4,000 players after the hype.
As goodwill, Mountaintop Studios announced that all purchases made in Spectre Divide in-game since Season 1 launched on February 25 will be refunded.
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