Spectre Divide News

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Hey everyone! This is Ben (or Brodrian), the Senior Community Manager over at Mountaintop, and I’m excited to share our first Community Update post with you all.

This will be a bi-weekly series where we highlight upcoming events, important info you may have missed, fan-made Spectre content, members of the community who are going above and beyond, and so much more. Just trust me—they’ll be fun.

We’re going to be covering a lot of ground in this first post, so let’s get right into it.



In our “What’s Next” post from this week, our CEO Nate shared some insight into how we’re planning on approaching the next few months before we reach Season 1, our next major milestone. One piece of our plan involves providing greater support for your community-led tournaments and events. That means putting up the fewest roadblocks possible, helping you get the word out about your events, assisting with prizing, and getting our team directly involved at times.

We believe wholeheartedly in the impact that grassroots competition can have and we’ve heard loud and clear that you feel the same. For anyone interested in organizing a tournament, you can get started by reading through our Tournament License. These guidelines cover everything you’ll need to know when it comes to:

• Tournament prize pools, rules, and marketing
  
• Crowdfunding and sponsorships
  
• Competitive integrity
  
• Tournament broadcasts
  
• Licensing and more
  

If you’d like to request support from our team, fill out the Spectre Divide Event Form and let us know how we can help! You can also reach out to us directly at [email protected] if you have questions or are interested in running an event outside the scope of the Tournament License.



Alongside supporting your events, we’re going to be running weekly events of our own with the goal of sparking creativity and competition in more ways than just traditional tournaments.

That could mean showing off your most overpowered Splinter Grenade lineup, voting on which of our outfit concepts we should add to the game in the future, finding creative Tutorial Speedrun strats, going head-to-head versus developers in a high-stakes Spectre trivia showdown, and whatever else I can get away with.

For this first one, we need help raising awareness for one of Breakwater’s powerhouses: Ryker Industries!


Headquartered in the thriving Port District, Ryker Industries is a truly iconic brand across the city. Santai competitors such as yourselves are likely most familiar with their offshore salvaging operations which directly led to the creation of Hull Mine explosives (or ‘Buoy Kablooies’ as some like to say) and Wave Scan technologies.

Beyond their undersea endeavors, Ryker has pioneered the next generation of packaging and shipping technologies for commercial and personal applications alike.*

Support The Port™️ and trust the experts at Ryker Industries today!

(*Use code Brodrian when booking for an additional 10% off)

Feeling inspired? Head over to discord.gg/SpectreDivide and share your best Ryker creations in the #fan-art channel using the Ryker tag.

Hit us with in-universe ads for something Ryker already makes, blueprints for future product lines, action shots of Santai competitors putting their gear to use, or whatever else you come up with.

You can download some additional Ryker art assets here.

We’ll end submissions next Wednesday (Oct. 16th) at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, and we’ll have prizes to share with our 3 favorites when we announce next week’s event in Discord and on our socials.

• 1st Place: 3,000 SP + Event Winner Weapon Charm
  
• 2nd Place: 2,000 SP + Event Winner Weapon Charm
  
• 3rd Place: 1,500 SP + Event Winner Weapon Charm
  

Actually… I should probably explain the last part of those prizes.



A while back we mentioned that we’d be creating exclusive weapon charms for Spectre MVPs and now we’re ready to show them off!


The freshly polished Event Winner Charm will be awarded to everyone who wins one of our own events like this week’s art contest.

Thankfully that’s not all. If you’re planning on running a tournament or competition, you can request these charms for the winners of your event. Just make sure to fill out the Spectre Divide Event Form ahead of time so we can get in touch beforehand.

The Event Winner Charm will also be retroactively granted to the winners of all our Discord tournaments held throughout the Alpha and Beta playtests. Congrats everyone!

Next, we’re giving out some heartfelt thanks with the Community Champions Charm. In each Community Update I’ll be highlighting players who’ve gone above and beyond to contribute to Spectre in their own ways.

The first recipients of this charm will be our Discord volunteers who’ve spent countless hours answering questions in chat, responding to ModMail tickets, organizing events during our playtests, and so much more.

Have someone in mind who you think deserves that recognition in a future post? Nominate them here.


Listen, let’s cut to the chase. Not everyone cares about fan art, tournaments, and everything else that’s distracting them from the Ranked grind. Some of you are simply here to pull off the most jaw-dropping, sheesh-worthy, game-winning outplays ever seen in all of Spectre. You’re here to click heads and take names. We get it.

In each Community Update we’ll highlight our favorite 5 plays from the past weeks and award some SP to the players who popped off the hardest.

• 1st Place: 2,500 SP
  
• 2nd-5th Place: 1,500 SP
  

With all that out of the way, check out Episode 1 below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KURPmgZp-IQ
Congrats to this week’s Top 5

• Truo 👑
  
• Bazza_Da
• HOT DOG
  
• iiTzTimmy
• Stelius

Have your own play to show off? Upload your clips here after reading the requirements.



That’s everything we have for you this week, but you can expect to see some twists and turns in our next Community Update. There are many differences between the modern day and the 22nd century, but even in Breakwater, this time of year gets a little spooky.

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.

[h2]HOW'S IT ALL GOING?[/h2]

“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.

[h2]MONTH 1 HIGHLIGHTS[/h2]


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

[h2]YOUR FEEDBACK [/h2]

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.

[h2]QUESTIONS & ANSWERS[/h2]


Let’s talk about some of your top questions:

[h3]Why didn’t you delay the launch?[/h3]

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.

[h3]Where’s the marketing?[/h3]

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.

[h3]Why was there a layoff?[/h3]

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.

[h3]What’s the plan for the Store?[/h3]

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

[h3]Any new developments regarding shroud and Mountaintop?[/h3]

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

[h3]What’s next?[/h3]


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

[h2]GENERAL[/h2]

• Added experimental servers in Frankfurt for better coverage in Europe (We’ll evaluate how often the server is used, and whether it is performing up to our standards before considering this a permanent addition to our region map.)
  
• Added additional fallback functionality to our region detection
  (This should allow you to see more applicable servers if your networking setup is blocking specific ports and connections.)
  

[h2]RANKED/CASUAL UPDATES[/h2]

• Slightly increased the maximum time to find a fair match given (We constantly adjust these values, but felt it was important to call out the intentional increase given smaller player population)
  

[h2]MAP UPDATES[/h2]

• Skyway – Removed the ability to shoot through the concrete wall from B Site 'Drop' toward Attacker spawn
  
• Mill – Re-added missing decals in spawn areas (These were accidentally removed in a prior patch)
  

[h2]QUALITY OF LIFE[/h2]

• Performance optimizations to improve framerate stability
  (Further performance improvements to Duality & Puck Throw visual effects)
  (Improved optimization of Bloom’s Hex Barrier visual effects)
  (Improved optimization of ZEUS’s explosion visual effects)
  
  
• The standard ‘device destruction’ visual effect for equipment like Morrgen’s Hidden Grasp & Ryker’s Arc Sentry is now less opaque, making it easier to fight through
  
• Improved localization and translations
  
• Minor network optimizations that should improve network performance for players on WiFi
  

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]

• Guns should no longer flicker above other players’ head when they deploy the Muu Dazzler
  
• Fixed an issue where the Alchemist weapon set’s liquid chambers had inconsistent physics in the Locker Room
  
• Fixed a few rare crashes
  
• 
  

Hi, it’s Nate, CEO at Mountaintop.

We’re 4 weeks since launch, and it feels like the right time to share another update on our anti-cheat efforts.

[h2]HOW'S IT GOING?[/h2]


Since launch, our anti-cheat priorities have been:

1. Ensuring competitive integrity on the ladder.
   
2. Removing cheaters from the game quickly.
   

Since our last update on Aug 29, we’ve banned thousands of players from Spectre Divide.


This wouldn’t be possible without your reports in-game and in Discord – thank you.

I also want to give a special shout out to our talented community of anti-cheat detectives, who've helped us identify both cheaters and cheat makers behind the scenes.

Your dedication has dramatically accelerated our anti-cheat efforts and tech.

Finally, a validating moment this week during one of the first major Spectre tournaments out of India: one of the competitors was confirmed cheating and banned mid-match by our detection systems.



This is only the beginning!

[h2]HOW HAVE SYSTEMS IMPROVED SINCE LAUNCH?[/h2]


We’ve been relentlessly shipping improvements at every layer of our anti-cheat stack with each update, including:

• Client protections (e.g., obfuscation, randomization)
  
• Local cheat detection (e.g., detecting cheat software running on the PC)
  
• ESP / wall hack protections (e.g., fog of war improvements, map changes)
  
• Cheat heuristic detection behaviors (e.g., identifying unusual patterns of action)
  
• Permanent bans tied to individual players (e.g., hardware bans)
  

We can’t share all the details on these systems for obvious reasons, but know we’re constantly advancing the features, quality, and calibration data.


[A visualization of some of the behaviors that we’re analyzing and actioning after every match.]

As a result, we’ve seen a substantial reduction in functional cheats and hacks in the past few weeks. Almost all of the known hacks are either patched or detected.

When a new player comes in, it takes our systems a few matches to evaluate their behavior. This helps us avoid banning legit players.

We don’t always ban cheaters immediately. If we know someone is cheating, we sometimes use them to help calibrate our systems to more quickly identify other cheaters using similar cheats.

Even with these considerations, less than 1% of Ranked matches have had a known cheater.

• As a point of reference, ~3% of Ranked matches see 1+ cheating report.
  

[h2]WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE ANTI-CHEAT ROADMAP?[/h2]


In addition to continuing to refine the systems above, one of our top priorities is letting you know when a cheater has been banned.

• You’re helping report and identify cheaters, but you’re not always seeing the results
  
• We're working on a system that notifies you when a player you've reported has been penalized
  

We’ll also be adding support for canceling a match if a cheater is banned mid-match in order to reduce the impact on your Ranked climb.

Going forward, we’ll be enforcing even faster and stricter consequences for cheating.

If you’re banned, all your accounts and their progress will be permanently lost, even if you’re only cheating on one account or you’ve stopped cheating altogether.

This is a battle that we’ll never stop fighting. To the cheaters out there reading this: play fair, or don’t play at all.

gl hf,

Nate

[h2]QUALITY OF LIFE[/h2]

• Performance optimizations to improve framerate stability (Improved performance to Duality & Puck Throw visual effects)
  
• Added Copy Match ID option in the Options Menu to help with providing info to the Mountaintop team
  
• Improved Surrender messaging when a teammate abandons a match to include penalty details, bonus money info, and how to surrender
  
• Reduced the frequency of ‘Play a match as a full team’ daily quest
  
• Improvements to underlying anti-cheat infrastructure
  

[h2]SOCIAL UPDATES[/h2]

• Removed Crews info from the in-game scoreboard to avoid confusion
  

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where you could use Bloom Twin Mend, Ghostlink Partition and Vector Wall pre-round without consuming any charges
  
• Fixed a bug where Surrender during Overtime would sometimes award the wrong Ranked point values to winners and losers
  
• Fixed a bug where Teams with a Team Rank of World Class 2 or higher could receive negative points for a win
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to jump-vault over thin walls from a crouching position
  
• Fixed a bug where some players were getting kicked from matches with a “Suspicious Network Traffic” error (from Sept. 26 hotfix)
  
• While most cases are resolved, we’re still seeing this occasionally occur on live. If you’re disconnected with this error message, please contact Player Support.
  
• Improved Bloom’s Twin Mend animation appearing choppy at higher framerates
  
• Fixed a bug where enemies defusing the ZEUS while revealed by Ryker Wave Scan could sometimes disappear from view
  
• Morrgen Meltdown (E) no longer does damage to teammates
  
• This was the intended change from the September 24 patch
  
• Fixed a bug where the Ryker Hull Mine voice over line would sometimes play “Detected” instead
  
• Fixed a bug where the Whisper option was not available on the End of Match screen
  
• Fixed a spot on Skyway B-site where players could shoot through the wall to spawn
  
• Fixed a spot on Metro where dropped weapons could clip through the floor if dropped from Nest down to Luggage
  
• Fixed spots on Commons and Metro where players could get up on to some window ledges unexpectedly
  
• Improved inconsistent shadows on the Prince outfit
  
• Fixed various crashes