Despite more than $60 million in investments, Shroud-backed FPS Spectre Divide and its dev are shutting down after the first season failed "to cover day-to-day costs"

FPS Spectre Divide is the next live service shooter to face an imminent shutdown.

Every few months, I find out about another live service game via an announcement of its closure - and Spectre Divide is next in line. Mountaintop Studios today announced that the 3v3 tactical shooter, made in the Counter-Strike and Valorant mold, will go offline in the next 30 days and the indie developer itself will also close its doors after failing to attract a sustainable playerbase. In-game purchases made since Season 1 went live will be refunded, thankfully, while new purchases are going to be entirely disabled.

Spectre Divide came out of the gate swinging last September, boasting a massive endorsement from streaming star Shroud, a novel take on the genre that had each player controlling two characters at the same time, and over $60 million in investments from the last few years. Bugs and some other issues left a sour first impression, however, and it took months for the game to receive its first seasonal update, which launched two weeks ago alongside an Xbox and PS5 port.

"It's been two weeks since we launched Spectre Divide Season 1: Flashpoint," Mountaintop CEO Nate Mitchell wrote in a new blog post. "We’re incredibly grateful for the positivity and support that you’ve shown over that short time. Unfortunately, the Season 1 launch hasn't achieved the level of success we needed to sustain the game and keep Mountaintop afloat. We were optimistic about the first week. We’ve had ~400,000 players play, with a peak concurrent player count of ~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."

Mitchell explained that the team "pursued every avenue to keep going," which included scouting around for a publisher, seeking more investment, and even looking for an acquisition opportunity. "In the end, we weren’t able to make it work," he continued. "The industry is in a tough spot right now. This is a painful update to share. We love Spectre, and we’re incredibly proud of what we built with this community."

"This has always been a passion project for us, born out of love for this genre. An indie team of insanely talented individuals who came together from around the world to build a game we believed in. We wanted to deliver something innovative and original in a crowded genre that would bring friends together around unforgettable moments. We shook up the format, created a fresh art style and universe, and partnered with some of our heroes. All of us knew from the beginning that the odds were against us, but that's what we signed up for. It was never a surefire bet."

Live service gambles have been more miss than hit lately. PlayStation's Concord is probably the most notable misfire of the last year, though Ubisoft's XDefiant and Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League didn't fare much better. I guess it's a situation of not enough butter (players) to spread out over the increasingly wide slice of toast (gestures vaguely to the bi-weekly multiplayer releases.)

Looking for something to fill the void? Check out the very best FPS games to play right now.