While Concord is finally being taken offline, another shooter, Spectre Divide, is currently proving to be a success – despite criticism and review bombing.
There has been a lot going on in the shooter genre in the last few hours: Sony finally pulled the plug on Concord and will soon be taking the flopped hero shooter offline again. Things are different, however, with the co-op shooter Spectre Divide from Mountaintop Studios.
This title is enjoying a surprising and relatively great success at launch. The shooter, developed with the help of Shroud, had a remarkable 30,971 players at the peak on Steam at the time of its release. Spectre Divide is therefore ranked 40th in the top 100 most played Steam games – ahead of well-known long-running hits such as Rocket League or Red Dead Redemption 2.
The fact that the game is doing so well is somewhat surprising, as Spectre Divide has also been a victim of review bombing. On Steam, the title has received a fairly mixed and predominantly negative review, but there is also a specific reason for this: the title relies on unpopular microtransactions.
Here, the developers of Mountaintop are clearly overshooting the mark when it comes to the tastes of the players. For example, one user complains that a skin costs $10 and a whole set costs $80. Another emphasizes that 4 of the 8 playable classes are hidden behind tedious grinding if you are not willing to pay the $20 paywall.
Other competitors such as Valorant also rely on such a system to finance the studio and further game development. As is well known, there is always room for debate about the level of prices. Ultimately, however, Spectre Divide can also be played completely free of charge. It will be interesting to see how the number of players develops in the future.
In Spectre Divide from Mountaintop Studios, you go into battle with two bodies. This video introduces you to the tactical shooter in more detail.
