Hey, it’s Nate, CEO & cofounder at Mountaintop.
It’s crazy to think we launched Spectre just 5 weeks ago. We’ve been working around the clock to improve the game, but there’s always more to do.
I wanted to take a moment to share some reflections on Month 1 – and more importantly – talk about what’s next.
HOW'S IT ALL GOING?
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” – Mark Twain
Some folks out there have declared Spectre ‘dead,’ mostly as a result of low concurrency.
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
- If player count drops from here, we have strategies for bringing players together, like combining the matchmaking queues
- And we'll continue working toward bringing in new players
We love this game – we’ve poured our heart and soul into it these past 4 years – and we’re just getting started.
More importantly, there’s an incredible core community who loves this game as much as we do.
- Your reviews, clips, videos, streams, and referrals have had a huge impact on growth and awareness
- As a small team, we rely on your support to keep Spectre moving forward, so thank you for everything! 🙏
You’ve now played over 1.42 million matches and 3.67 million hours (400+ years) of Spectre 🚀
- This is why we started this studio and this project
Even though we’re an independent studio, we have the funds to support Spectre for a long time. And I promise: we’re going to make Spectre awesome together.
MONTH 1 HIGHLIGHTS
Let’s talk about some of the highlights from Sept –
We’ve been shipping updates every week based on your feedback:
- Performance is improved
- Movement is faster
- Equipment is snappier
- Progression is quicker
- Cosmetic prices are lower
- Color grading is refreshed
- Solo Customs are live
- Ultra Wide support is available
- Anti-cheat systems are tuned up
- Disconnects & crashes are at an all-time low
- New server regions are online in EU West, NA Northwest, Middle East, and South Africa
Over 207 talented players have achieved the coveted Champion rank.
- The first 10: truo, o_q, Kryptic, Fabr1c, dazzle, lore, Reliom5, Zaetee, DeadEye, and high
We hosted the first Community Invitational, and crowned our first champions: Detailed, Kryptic, Diceyzx 👑
Community Tournament Guidelines have also arrived. We’re thrilled to help support grassroots competition around the world
YOUR FEEDBACK
We’ve been pouring over your feedback across streams, Discord, reddit, X/Twitter, and Steam reviews. Tens of thousands of thoughtful comments about what you want to see.
Between the insane amount of great feedback and suggestions – and the existing issues players are facing – the most difficult part of our job is prioritizing what to do first.
- What’s most impactful for this community and the health of the game?
Right now, we’re in a Save Round – we need some time to go heads-down, improve the game, and tackle some of your bigger asks – but Season 1 will be that Full Buy
First, let’s talk about a few of our top priorities:
- Client performance: We've been shipping new optimizations every week, and we've got more in the pipe – some need a bit more testing before they’re ready for primetime
Our top priority continues to be improving frame rate stability, especially during heavy action
- Ping & server regions: We’ve expanded our server regions to include coverage in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, and South America
We believe we’ve addressed the connection and routing issues from launch, but we’re also adding a region selector for Ranked + Casual soon
- Anti-cheat: We just shared a detailed update on anti-cheat progress since launch. Hopefully you’re feeling the impact of the team’s hard work
- Game stability: We’ve dramatically improved stability – especially disconnects and crashes – but there’s more work to do. We’ll make sure stability continues to improve with every release
Next, let’s talk about some of your top suggestions:
- Battle Pass: This is easily your most requested feature. Fortunately, we’ve been working on it since before Beta. The first Battle Pass will drop alongside Season 1 with a ton of new content to unlock while you play
- Ranked Rewards for Season 0: Ranked & Crew Rewards – weapon charms – are coming at the end of Season 0. More details in the Ranked blog post from season start
- Careers Tab in Main Menu: We’ll have a basic version of Careers ready for Season 1 with Match History and some of your key seasonal stats. We’ll flesh Careers out over time based on your feedback
- Sponsor #9: The next Sponsor is in the polishing stage now and it will launch alongside Season 1, and should shake up the meta in some interesting ways
There have also been a bunch of suggestions for a new Casual mode, like Deathmatch. This is on the long term roadmap, but right now we’re dedicating all our energy to making sure our core modes – Ranked and Casual – are in the best possible state. We also want to avoid further fragmenting the matchmaking queue.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Let’s talk about some of your top questions:
Why didn’t you delay the launch?
Two main reasons:
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 + player feedback. Unfortunately, we overlooked some critical gaps that were exposed when real players from all over the world showed up en masse
If we knew everything we know now, we’d have definitely delayed a few weeks to address those issues.
Where’s the marketing?
The lack of marketing spend is a direct consequence of self-publishing. We don’t have a ton of cash stashed away to spend on advertising. This is also one of the most competitive times to spend given the holiday season
As a small studio, we rely on word of mouth, reviews, clips, creators, and this community to spread the word. Thank you for all for the help in bringing Spectre to more players.
Right now, we’re saving every marketing dollar for that moment when we’re ready to bring in a bunch of new players – likely Season 1.
Why was there a layoff?
We made the difficult decision to reduce our monthly spend to make sure we were set up to support Spectre for the long term. In the run up to launch, the studio grew from more than 85 devs to support a bigger live service roadmap.
We’re now back to ~75 full-time devs, but we have plenty of firepower to bring our plans to life.
What’s the plan for the Store?
We’re going to keep releasing new content in the Store, but we’re going to slow down the amount of content dropping each month. We believe having more fresh content available is a good thing for everyone playing the game everyday
We appreciate any purchases you make to support Spectre & Mountaintop – as a free-to-play game, all of it goes toward funding development and server costs. All of the Store content was made pre-launch, and none of it impacts/delays future updates.
The team is laser focused on improving the game as our top priority
Any new developments regarding shroud and Mountaintop?
shroud has been an incredible advisor for Spectre, and his feedback has been world-class.
We’re still working with him on future design iterations, and he’s been helping us think through ways to make Spectre as compelling as possible for both community members and streamers. The reality is that Mountaintop has been bringing Spectre to life since 2020, and the game belongs to Mountaintop.
Speaking of community, I want to shout out some of the amazing creators who have also contributed to making this community what it is:
truo
staycationtg
trunkZnopants
PigeonR6
steazEcs
liqiors
Bryghts
FJC
Varsity Variety
Moepork
Lycos/Best of Spectre Divide
What’s next?
We’re hard at work on Season 1 – our Full Buy – as the next major beat. Season 1 will be Dec or Jan depending on how everything comes together.
In the meantime, we’ll keep dropping optimizations and improvements as we have them.
We’ll be hosting a fireside chat in the next few days on our Discord to continue the conversation. We’d love to chat with you more there.
Thanks again for all your support. Keep the feedback coming – we’re listening.
gl hf,
Nate