"Spectre Divide: Free Shooter Closes Weeks Post-Console Launch"

The free-to-play 3v3 shooter, Spectre Divide, is set to shut down just six months after its initial launch in September 2024 and mere weeks following its debut on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. This unfortunate news also marks the closure of its developer, Mountaintop Studios.

Mountaintop CEO Nate Mitchell confirmed the news in a statement shared on social media today, stating, “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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The team was initially optimistic, reporting that the game attracted around 400,000 players in its first week, with a peak concurrent count of approximately 10,000 across all platforms. However, Mitchell noted, “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.”

Despite their efforts to find a publisher, additional investment, or an acquisition, Mountaintop Studios was unable to secure the necessary support. Mitchell reflected on the industry's current challenges, saying, “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 Mountaintop Studios has committed to refunding any money spent by players since the Season 1 launch.

This development contradicts earlier statements from October 2024, where Mitchell 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 positive preview of Spectre Divide in August 2024 praised the game’s tactical 3v3 gameplay and its innovative Duality system, which allowed players to control two characters during matches. However, the rapid shutdown of Spectre Divide adds to a growing list of live-service game failures, including Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Sony’s Concord.