Free-to-Play Shooter Spectre Divide Shutting Down Weeks After Console Launch

Free-to-play 3v3 shooter Spectre Divide is being shut down six months after its initial launch in September 2024, and just weeks after its arrival on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Its developer Mountaintop Studios is also closing.

Moutaintop CEO Nate Mitchell confirmed the news in a statement published on social media today.

“Unfortunately, the Season 1 launch hasn’t achieved the level of success we needed to sustain the game and keep Mountaintop afloat,” explains the post.

The team was optimistic following the first week, reporting the game attracted around 400,000 players – with a peak concurrent count of approximately 10,000 across all platforms.

“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,” the post continued. “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.”

“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 money spent by players since the Season 1 launch will be refunded.

The news comes contrary to reports in October 2024 that Spectre Divide “isn’t going anywhere.”

“The servers aren’t shutting down, and the updates aren’t going to stop,” said Mitchell at the time, maintaining Mountaintop had “the funds to support Spectre for a long time.”

IGN’s positive preview of Spectre Divide in August 2024 heaped praise on the tactical 3v3 shooter for coming to the table with its intriguing Duality system, which saw players controlling two characters during matches. However, the news of its rapid shutdown comes on the heels of a number of other live-service fizzers, including the failure of Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Sony’s Concord.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.