Spectre Divide chief: 'I can guarantee you that Spectre won't be going anywhere. So please stop saying the game is dying.

Nate Mitchell, Mountaintop Studios' co-founder and CEO, says that the free-to-play shooting game Spectre Divide will not die. This is in response to concerns about low concurrent player counts.

Mitchell wrote: "Some people have declared Spectre a 'dead' game, mainly because of the low player count." "It is true that Spectre has fewer concurrent players than we would like."

Mitchell acknowledged that PvP-style games like Spectre Divide require a large player base "for healthy matchmaking" and that without this player base, you'll be in longer queues and have less fair matches. It's fair that Spectre Divide Steam numbers aren't spectacular. Since its launch on September 3rd, the game's simultaneous player count has steadily declined to a few thousands a day. This is not a Concord-like disaster, but it's nowhere near heavy hitters such as Counter-Strike 2 (932,684 players currently), Rainbow Six Siege (56,644 concurrents), Team Fortress 2 ($55,891) or Overwatch 2 ($32,018).

Mitchell wrote: "I can assure that Spectre will not disappear." "The servers won't be shutting down and the updates won't stop. If the player count drops, we'll have strategies to bring players together. For example, we can combine matchmaking queues. We'll keep working to bring in new players.

"We love this sport--we have poured our hearts and souls into it for the past four years, and we're only just getting started."

Mitchell also paid homage to the "incredible community who love this game as much we do," who, he said, have now played over 1.42 million matches in 3.67 million hours. Even if the concurrent player numbers are less than optimal, "we still have the funds" to support Spectre indefinitely. And I promise: Together, we're going make Spectre awesome.

Mitchell explained in a FAQ that Mountaintop decided not to delay Spectre Divide, because it would have "traded off funding for marketing" and put the release of the game up against many "high-budget campaigns," which would have made Spectre Divide even harder to get attention. Mitchell admitted that the team would have chosen to delay the launch a few more weeks "if we had known everything now," referring to the serious matchmaking problems that plagued the launch of the game.

He also spoke about the Mountaintop layoffs in September: "We took the difficult decision to lower our monthly spending to ensure we were prepared to support Spectre on a long-term basis. The studio grew to more than 85 developers in the lead up to launch to support a larger live service roadmap. We're back to 75 devs full-time, but we still have enough firepower to bring all of our plans to life."

The update also contains a list of the changes made to the title since its launch, as well as what the studio is planning for the near future. Priorities include improving the performance and stability of the game, expanding the server coverage, and upgrading the anti-cheat efforts. A battle pass will be available for the start of Season 1, and ranked rewards will also be released.

Spectre Divide has shown a lot of promise in its early stages. PC Gamer's Morgan Park who is no stranger to shooting other people online was impressed by the tight, accessible gameplay that's more like Rainbow Six Siege's straightforward guns than Counter-Strike. Unfortunately, being good does not guarantee a game's success, especially when it comes to a genre that is already crowded with well-established, big games. If you don't give them a compelling reason to change from their favorite game--and sorry but "this is also good" doesn't count--then they won't bother.

It's inevitable that this will become a problem at some point. Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodhunt was the only extraction shooter that I really enjoyed. Its development ended in May 2023 - just one year after its launch. (Fortunately, servers are still online and hundreds continue to play.). I don't want to be a bummer, but Bloodhunt had around 1,500 players playing at the same time when it was shut down. That's not too far from where Spectre Divide currently is.