Earlier this week, developer Mountaintop Studios introduced that it could be closing, and shutting down its debut title, Spectre: Divide, inside the subsequent 30 days. Simply 6 months after the sport’s preliminary launch, and solely weeks after its arrival on PS5 and different current-gen consoles, this new 3v3 tactical shooter was formally seeing its remaining days.
It was an unlucky announcement because it meant the elimination of a sport that some folks loved, and everybody at Mountaintop dropping their jobs, thrust as soon as once more right into a risky and overcrowded job market. It was not a cheerful announcement, and served as one other reminder as to only how crowded and aggressive the free-to-play FPS market is.
FragPunk developer Dangerous Guitar Studio, nonetheless, or extra precisely, its socials group, didn’t learn the room. In a now deleted remark that X customers have been fast to screenshot, beneath Mountaintop’s announcement, the official FragPunk social account used a well-liked Captain America meme in a mocking trend, implying that Mountaintop had “tousled,” leading to Spectre: Divide’s shutdown, and that FragPunk had extra longevity to it.
The studio has since apologized for the remark, calling it “insensitive and unprofessional.” It continued that the remark “doesn’t mirror our studio’s values or respect for fellow trade friends.”
Sport builders have come to anticipate unfair and harsh phrases from common avid gamers on a regular basis, who cover behind their pc screens and profile avatars that hold them nameless whereas spewing the sort of rhetoric Dangerous Guitar Studio displayed right here. It’s shocking, to say the least, to see it come from one other sport studio.
Not to mention a sport studio that, much like Mountaintop, made a free-to-play FPS sport that’s making an attempt to compete with each different main free-to-play FPS sport.
Mountaintop Studios was additionally an unbiased group, creating and publishing Spectre: Divide by itself. Dangerous Guitar Studio is a subsidiary of Thunderfire Video games, which is a subsidiary of NetEase Video games, one of many world’s greatest sport publishers and builders. Dangerous Guitar’s touch upon Mountaintop’s closure couldn’t have been punching down extra if it tried.
And that’s all earlier than contemplating the opposite side to all of this, that Dangerous Guitar Studio may discover itself in the same place to Mountaintop inside a 12 months. With the backing of NetEase, it’s probably that FragPunk will likely be given extra runway than Mountaintop may have given Spectre: Divide, however anybody following FPS video games in the previous couple of years is aware of that having the backing of an enormous writer and/or guardian firm does nothing to cease a studio and/or a brand new sport from being shut down.
XDefiant was shut down by Ubisoft inside one 12 months of it launching. SEGA cancelled Hyena’s earlier than it may even launch, and naturally nobody will quickly overlook Sony’s shut down of Harmony.
These are just some of the numerous examples of video games from huge publishers/builders that struggled to, or barely acquired the prospect to, compete with the juggernauts of the style like Name of Responsibility, Valorant, Apex Legends and Counter-Strike. You could possibly additionally doubtlessly add Marvel Rivals to that listing, one other sport that’s in NetEase’s portfolio.
FragPunk is at present having fun with a robust launch, with 73,166 gamers in-game at time of writing, after solely arriving on PC this previous March 6, 2025. It’s mentioned to be on consoles “inside the subsequent two months,” in line with the FAQ on its web site.
That’s all nice information for Dangerous Guitar and NetEase, for now. We’ll see the way it’s doing in a 12 months’s time.
Supply – [Bad Guitar Studio]
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