Multiplayer Tactical Shooter Spectre Divide is Shutting Down Six Months After Launch

Just months after release on PC and weeks after hitting consoles, tactical shooter Spectre Divide is going offline in 30 days and developer Mountaintop is shutting down. 

These decisions were announced by CEO Nate Mitchell in a letter directly to the Spectre community. While the start was promising, with 400k players, leaving the team optimistic, concurrent player count dropped, and “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”.

Season 1: Flashpoint is running and will continue in the weeks left. Mountaintop is disabling new purchases and will be refunding money spent since season 1 launched in late February.  Spectre Divide had drawn criticism for selling cosmetics for $90, later dropping the price of those skins to $70. With the season still so new, refunds were the right call.

Despite securing investments, including $30 million just over a year ago, the writing on the wall seems to have come between the player count drops and mixed responses. Mountaintop, as an independent developer, isn't even going to make it to the end of Spectre Divide’s run. They’re shutting down at the end of this week.

“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,” Mitchell says.

Indeed, after a couple of very difficult years in the games industry, whenever there’s a new shutdown or layoff notice, it’s hard to be surprised since an upswing hasn’t been happening just yet. 

The shutdown notice was posted, not with screenshots from the game, or promo slides, but with a photograph of the team. Best of luck to all of them.