I have 41 minutes in the launch version of Spectre Divide, the new tactical FPS from Mountaintop Studios that has enjoyed loads of buzz from Valorant and Counter-Strike enjoyers through its closed and open betas. Normally, 41 minutes is more than enough time to fit in a match of Spectre, but I've been stuck staring at its menus thanks to unfortunate matchmaking bugs. I can't find a match despite around 30,000 people playing it, and once I start a queue, I can't cancel it unless I close the game.
Developer Mountaintop Studios has acknowledged the holdup and is working on a fix. The most recent update from the official Discord: "If you are in a queue longer than 11 minutes, restart your client and try again."
While waiting in my unstoppable queue, I tabbed over the Spectre Divide store and was met with a familiar eyesore: a $90 skin bundle resting above a $45 skin bundle. The Cry Kinesis bundle ($90) could be considered Spectre's flagship microtransaction for launch day—slapping sci-fi greebling and blue "cryo" FX on four of the shooter's most popular guns and transforming the knife into a glowing blue handaxe. "Cool," is what I would be able to say about these gun-fits if they weren't so insultingly overpriced.
Predictably, some folks in the burgeoning Spectre Divide community are having a tough time with Spectre's cosmetics, too.
"I’m one of those losers that buys skins right away but… these are so basic I’m not even considering buying them," wrote user Dovawin on the current top post of the Spectre Divide subreddit. "What a shame."
"I genuinely want to support the devs by purchasing something in game, but I’m definitely not dropping $100 on some basic looking skins," wrote JasoniPepperoni in the same thread.
You won't find many folks defending Mountaintop's monetization choices, but the prices won't be shocking to players coming from Valorant, the competitive FPS that Spectre is most alike. Valorant's egregious skin prices are infamous in the FPS community—a reputation that Riot has done nothing to mitigate over the years because a ton of people buy the stuff anyway.
I've seen a few Valorant players point out one detail of Spectre's monetization that's less friendly to customers: In Valorant, it's possible to buy individual skins from a bundle for a lower price, but Spectre's bundles are currently all or nothing. Just stinky choices being made here.
Moving between game communities can sometimes feel like arriving in a new country with different customs. In most parts of the world, you'd get run out of town for trying to sell a weak sci-fi AK-47 in a bundle totaling $90. But in the country of Riot Games, which shares a border with the Republic of Valve, those prices are commonplace. Mountaintop is setting up shop next door and doing the same thing—standing next to its cosmetics that cost almost as much as my two-week grocery run, and proudly declaring it's worth it. It's insulting as a beta player who was pretty jazzed for the full version of Spectre, but broadly, it is getting harder to enjoy any ongoing FPS without feeling similarly exploited. Anecdotally, I've clocked a rising boldness in free-to-play studios to upcharge its longtime players, most recently with Apex Legends' confusing and greedy battle pass mixup that was partially walked back in July.
When I interviewed game director Lee Horn in July just before Spectre Divide's reveal, he told me he believes Spectre is a good value.
"One core thing is we don't sell power, and you can pay us nothing. You can go pro, you can compete at the highest level [without paying]," Horn said. "The way we support that is by making the coolest content possible. Hopefully players see it's a good value and want to support that."
Mountaintop wants you to believe we're actually the ones with the deal here because we're getting a free-to-play game that's so good we're gonna wanna play it for 10,000 hours. Even in that extremely generous view that imagines I should feel lucky to play such an elevated piece of software, it's a bit premature, isn't it? Mountaintop isn't blasting onto the FPS scene with the pedigree of the biggest MOBA on the planet—it's a startup of shooter devs making its first game.
Spectre isn't beating the greed allegations so far, but a good start would be getting the game working properly. Maybe once I can get into a match without waiting the better part of an hour, these bundles will be easier to ignore and I'll just have my fun with Spectre's promising gunplay and "Duality" hooks.
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