Failed FPS Spectre Divide could have succeeded "in a parallel universe" say devs

Players were excited for Spectre Divide. The tactical FPS game was trying to break into the same space as Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant, and things looked good initially. An open beta was received pretty well, and the developers promised to act on the feedback received. Critics covered the beta extensively, and the praise from them was even more positive. Developer Mountaintop Studios even had gargantuan FPS streamer Michael 'Shroud' Grzesiek on board. Ultimately, none of it was enough to sustain the live-service game, and both Spectre Divide and Mountaintop shut down within months of launching.

What went wrong? All manner of factors play into a game's success. As well as the quality of the game, the timing of release is important, as is how it compares to its competitors. You've got to be familiar, but have a USP. The same, but different. It's a tricky balance to maintain.

Spectre Divide had a few major issues. Its servers couldn't support the influx of players at launch, and those that did get in complained about the monetization, including a $90 bundle of skins. While many of the best FPS games implement similar monetizaion, it didn't make for a great first impression.

Mountaintop Studio's founders, Nate Mitchell and Matt Hansen, explained more to 80lv. You can read the full interview here, but a few key points jumped out. Firstly, the timing.

Mountaintop didn't want to release its live-service FPS game during the hectic Christmas rush, so it had two choices: push it early, before it was ready, and continue to work on updates post-launch. Or wait until 2025 and release a more polished game. Unfortunately, its hand was forced, as the money it had fundraised from venture capitalists wouldn't fund the 100-person team until the new year.

It was "really tough," Hansen says, and the pair believe that a more polished version of Spectre Divide would have contained many of the features fans were asking for at launch. However, Shroud's involvement also confused things, too/

"The expectations from players, given Shroud's involvement, didn't match our capabilities as an indie dev," Mitchell says. Shroud is usually associated with the biggest triple-A titles, and while Mountaintop had developers with that experience on board, the funding, timelines, and scope of Spectre Divide couldn't possibly match that of Valorant or Counter-Strike.

Valorant had also warped player expectations, the pair believe. They were no longer competing with Valorant in its launch state—Spectre Divide launched with a similar suite of features as Riot's title—they were competing with Valorant five years on. For an indie team, that simply wasn't possible. This all came down to communication, Mitchell and Hansen say. They should have better communicated to players who they were, the size of their team, and the scope of Spectre Divide.

The open beta also caused a few problems. While the media covered it with glowing reports, the full game arrived too soon after and was, crucially, too similar, to warrant a second round of coverage. This took the wind out of the sails of the game's launch.

Ultimately, Mitchell believes that with a big enough influx of players on launch day, the game would have been a success. Not necessarily on the same level as the behemoths of the genre, but successful enough to not shut its doors six months after launch.

"In a parallel universe where we didn't have the server issues, where the community wasn't frustrated with our early pricing that rankled people, where maybe we had a bit more money for marketing, we could have gotten the critical mass going," he says.

Unfortunately, the rocky launch left Mountaintop Studios in a tricky position, and the rest, as they say, is history. Perhaps, in a parallel universe, things could have been different. Perhaps we'd all be playing the game's second season and completing the battle pass (that was included at launch in this timeline). But there's no way of knowing for sure.

If you miss Spectre Divide as much as I do, check out some of the best free PC games for something similar. We've also got our list of the best multiplayer games for your perusal.

If you've got strong thoughts on battle pass pricing or Spectre Divide's rocky launch, let us know in our community Discord channel, where staff and readers hang out.