This week, Mountaintop Studios announced its closure due to a dwindling Spectre Divide player base, and FragPunk piled on by claiming the studio “messed up.”
It has only been a short time since Mountaintop Studios launched Spectre Divide‘s Season 1: Flashpoint, and the studio has already announced the title will be shutting down. This week, Mountaintop Studios released a letter to fans announcing the game’s closure. The letter, penned by Nate and the Mountaintop team, reads: “Unfortunately, the Season 1 launch hasn’t achieved the level of success we needed to sustain the game and keep Mountaintop afloat.” The rest of the letter can be read below.
One thing is apparent from the farewell letter—Mountaintop Studios cared about Spectre Divide, and the team was proud of the work they put out after years of development to create an original title. The studio expects “to take Spectre offline within the next 30 days,” but not everyone is lamenting the loss of the newly released FPS.
Under the official X (formerly Twitter) post announcing Spectre Divide‘s shutdown, the official account for the FPS FragPunk posted a joking image taunting the closure, suggesting Mountaintop “messed up.”
The post was then reposted by Mountaintop Studios’ senior LiveOps producer, Marcus Schubert, on LinkedIn. He wrote a scathing response to FragPunk (which is owned by NetEase), stating: “NetEase Games, this is disgusting. Shame on you. For those unaware, the top post is our farewell letter indicating that Mountaintop Studios is shutting down.”
Since the post—and the backlash that followed—FragPunk has taken to X again to publicly apologize to Mountaintop Studios. That response can be seen below.
After posting the apology, Schubert responded again on LinkedIn, saying: “Thank you, NetEase Games, for apologizing publicly on X. Next time, I wouldn’t wait 9+ hours to apologize. If you’re looking for some exceptional people to help run your comms, I know a couple who are looking for work.”
NetEase Games notably confirmed layoffs for the North American development team of Marvel Rivals weeks after the title boasted $130 million in revenue in its first month.
Mountaintop Studios’ Spectre Divide is expected to shut down within 30 days of this post.
