Mario Bautista
We all know just how hard it is these days for new free-to-play, live service, competitive multiplayer games – muscling in with the Counter-Strikes and CODs of the world is a tall order. Even those that appear to have got most things right on paper, such as new 3v3 tactical shooter Spectre Divide, aren’t immune from this struggle. Developer Mountaintop recognizes this, and just over a month on from the game’s launch, it’s penned a new blog talking about its future plans, a time frame for launching its vital first season, and why it “isn’t going anywhere” despite claims of it being a dying game already.
While work started on this new FPS game four years ago, Spectre Divide really didn’t hang about at the tail end of its development cycle. In the space of just over two months, Mountaintop publicly revealed its new game, hosted betas and preview events, and then fully launched it into an initial preseason. It’s been five weeks since that launch, and while its been hard at work making improvements to its gameplay, performance, and cosmetics store, there’s no escaping the fact that its player count has slid a fair bit.
Despite initially peaking at around 30,000 players and sustaining a fairly healthy player base for its first couple of weeks, at the time of writing it is only attracting around 3,000 people. As Spectre Divide is only available on Steam and not on any other platforms right now, this is the full picture of its total player count.
“Some folks out there have declared Spectre ‘dead,’ mostly as a result of low concurrency,” writes Mountaintop CEO and co-founder Nate Mitchell. “It’s true that Spectre’s concurrent player count is lower than we’d all like. Ultimately, a PvP game like Spectre needs plenty of players for healthy matchmaking. Without them, you’re in longer queues and less fair matches. With that said, I can assure you that Spectre isn’t going anywhere. The servers aren’t shutting down, and the updates aren’t going to stop.”
Mitchell says that the team is currently in a ‘save round’ right now as it contains to focus all its efforts on improving the foundations of the game, but a flurry of new content and excitement is set to arrive with Season 1 – or the ‘full buy’, to continue the analogy. However, it sounds like Spectre’s first proper season is still a way off. “Depending on how everything comes together,” Spectre Divide Season 1 will arrive at some point in December or January, so it’s at least another two months away.
So, despite the hasty launch, things are going to slow down for Spectre for a while as it rebuilds and has another shot with the launch of Season 1. Addressing fans’ concerns about why Mountaintop didn’t just delay its game, given its early struggles, Mitchell says:
“As an independent studio, delaying launch trades off against funding for marketing. We also didn’t want to launch in the middle of the holiday season between so many high budget marketing campaigns. Coming out of Beta, we thought the tech stack was ready for launch based on our data and player feedback. Unfortunately, we overlooked some critical gaps that were exposed when real players from all over the world showed up en masse.”
I really want Spectre to see some kind of upsurge and revival when Season 1 does eventually arrive – the core gameplay mechanic of being able to control two bodies at once is one of the freshest ideas I’ve seen in the FPS space for some time. It’s good to see Mountaintop also acknowledging its early problems and being open about its decisions and future plans – I just hope that transparency is rewarded later down the line.
While you should definitely hop in and give Spectre Divide a shot, here are some alternative free PC games and multiplayer games you can play right now too.
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