I haven't cried this hard in a very long time. This post will get inevitably get long, contain typos, and leave names out by accident, so apologies in advance. In 2022, Mountaintop took a flier on a guy who'd never worked on a game before. I had a year and a half of professional experience at a games-adjacent brand and many more years running communities as a volunteer under my belt, but this was something entirely new. I first played what would become Spectre Divide shortly after the team had made the decision to go all-in on the Duality mechanic. I got to see a team of wildly talented and creative designers, artists, engineers, producers, QA, and more build something special from the ground up. My first real project was managing some of our earliest external playtests with the community and potential investors. I saw our Discord server slowly grow from <100 friends and family members to 1,000 then 10,000 then 100,000. I can't explain how infectious the energy was during those early years of playtesting before we'd officially unveiled the game. Watching Truo, SteazE, BixLe, Aira, K2, Moepork, Ski, Indysaurus, Blackfire, and dozens of others fight tooth and nail to reach the top of these seemingly pointless little leaderboards for a game fully under NDA was incredible. I will forever treasure my memories of sitting in call for hours and listening to new players argue about how ridiculously overpowered some gun or ability were after weekend playtests. Those who played the game a lot understand that there really was something magical about the first time you feel the two body mechanic "click" for you. The first time you start defusing the bomb and swap bodies to cover yourself. The first time you tag someone from one body, duck behind cover, swap bodies, and finish them off from a different angle while they're distracted. The first time you lose a body at the very start of a round and manage to pull off a huge clutch with your surviving body. The first time you fat-finger the wrong button and accidently throw your Puck into the middle of the whole enemy team when you meant to throw a grenade and your whole team starts losing it in a Discord call. That shit was special. It just was. Duality challenged our whole team to think about tactical shooters in genuinely new and fascinating ways. We spent whole nights in after-hours calls theorycrafting crazy plays and strats to pull out in our own internal playtests and tournaments. We'd brainstorm wild abilities, maps, and weapons that would never see the light of day. We loved Spectre. It hurt deeply when it became clear that our initial PC launch simply wasn't good enough to make that magic real to a large audience. We knew it was had a long way to go and I wish we could have done more to communicate transparently at the time. It hurt a lot more to see what was special about the game get totally overshadowed by other narratives. It kills me that so many people will never know of Spectre as anything more than "Shroud's Game." Spectre Divide was not "Shroud's Game." It was Mark's Game where he wrote pages upon pages of worldbuilding documents that we'll never have the chance to bring to life. It was Jake, Devin, and Michael's Game, where they came up with an endless supply of wildly creative Sponsor ideas and ways to show off Duality. It was Brent's Game, where he crafted weapons that felt satisfying and interesting to fight with, while putting up with an endless stream of feedback about how everything was both overpowered or underpowered. It was Sydney, Christian, and Barane's Game, where they added a hundred extra details to the UI to sell the fantasy of being a competitor in this wild, futuristic sport and made it all function how it needed to. It was Clint and Jud's Game, where they confidently tackled all the wild challenges that came with designing maps for players with two bodies. It was Jostin, Gabe, Kyle, and Jared's Game, where they meticulously made sure that no bug went undocumented and spent hours upon hours fighting to make the player experience as great as it could be. It was Marcus, Sam, and Aidan's Game, where they stayed up impossibly late to make sure patches were deployed properly and didn't mind being woken up in the middle of the night to deal with emerging issues. It was Matt, Kathleen, and Rod's Game, where they dug into every possible option to keep players safe and keep cheater vendors mad as hell at us. It was Dan, Kevin, and Melvin's Game, where they jammed for endless hours to actually make this crazy game work in-engine without exploding. It was Orlando, Brandon, Jon, and Andrea's Game, where they dreamed up some of the most gorgeous concept art I've seen and inspired our team's work. It was Seth, Matt, and Dasha's Game, where they brought to life the people, fashion, and customization of Santai competition. It was Hans and Andrew's Game, where they brought the environments of Breakwater to life across Spectre's maps. It was Christian and Dominik's Game, where they made sure that art was actually all working for players and was more than just fun to look at. It was David, Nhathy, Justin, Andrew, Bob, Jeff, and Alex's Game, where they poured in incredible effort to make sure that a million deeply complicated, critical systems were organized and running smoothly for players. It was Zully, Andy, Kevin, and Rey's Game, where every single day they helped our different teams stay on track, prioritize, and succeed. It was Kristi and Sam's Game, where they brought the music, sounds, and audio environments of Spectre to life. It was Brian's Game, where he designed thoughtful and unique systems for players to engage with and find community through. It was Justin, Charles, Conner, and Anne's Game, where they meticulously handled thousands of player support tickets and wrote countless help docs to help players deal with all our ups and downs. It was Tim, Ian, Cris, Dermot, and Josh's Game, where they designed graphics, art, and videos that fueled our marketing and social content. It was Steven, Joe, Atty, Chris, and Jeff's Game, where they busted their asses to make sure as many people had the opportunity to hear about Spectre. It was a game that belonged to dozens and dozens of others who I wish I could include with a hundred times more detail than this one post. It was my game. It was my game where I spent hundreds of hours playtesting with every name on that list. It was my game where I wrote up rambling, multi-page docs about how we could make our game even more engaging for players and bring the world to life. It was my game where I pulled an all-nighter to process playtest applications because our Discord bot broke and I didn't want a single person to miss the chance to play in that playtest. It was my game that gave me the chance to sing overly intoxicated Taylor Swift duets at karaoke with Orlando. It was my game where I made friends that I care about so deeply and hope remain in my life for years and years to come. It was a game that changed my life. I feel bad for each and every person only ever got to know it as "Shroud's Game." They were never given the chance to see what I got to see. The most painful part of this whole process is knowing that our game will soon be gone. When a movie studio or music label close down, preserving that art isn't that complicated. I can watch or listen to all kinds of art from companies that failed to reach financial profitability. I can still emulate my favorite GameCube games or play the campaign for Battlefield 3. The brutal reality of modern-day live service games is that if I have kids, I will never be able to teach them how to line up a Bloom smoke like I did. I'll never be able to see their eyes light up after hitting a lucky headshot to clutch a win. They'll never discover my easter egg on Metro. I'll be able to pause a Staycation video and get excited about my favorite parts of the game, but they won't ever experience it. Don't take anything you love for granted. I really thought we had a shot at making it and a part of me is still in shock at how quickly it has to come to an end. I have a laundry list of things I wish I had been able to do for our community and our creators, but it is what it is. I don't know what I'll be doing next or if I'll be able to find work in the current market of the games industry. I'll likely make a separate post about the job search in a couple days when things don't feel as raw. My DMs are open with any leads or opportunities. From the bottom of my heart, it's been an honor to be able to share this project with all of you. I never could have imagined three years ago that I'd be part of something like this. I wouldn't trade it for anything. See you in Breakwater

Life Update: After a stressful month of job hunting, I'm excited to share that I've accepted an offer to join @1047Games as the Community Manager for @Splitgate 2! This is a seriously great team and I can't wait to get right into the action starting with this month's Open Beta

One note on tomorrow's reveal. There are inevitably going to be players who claim that introducing this to Splitgate 2 means modes like Arena and Onslaught will be "abandoned." That is simply wrong. Those modes are at the heart of SG2 and we have so much planned there. Future seasons have been mapped out and there's no shortage of new content, new maps, new tools and weapons for each faction, new modes, and new feature. We're already making balance changes for modes at launch based on player data and feedback from the Open Beta. The team has been set up with support for both in mind. Our team playtests both constantly and we have a blast while doing it. If you're not interested in what we reveal because of your personal preferences, that is completely fine. Splitgate 2 will still be a complete and awesome experience for players who never spend 1 minute on it. For me personally, this is genuinely some of the most fun I've ever had with Splitgate 2. I can't wait for you all to experience it soon.

I can't believe they didn't want to use my graphic

I almost had a heart attack reading this

Can't believe in 2 days we'll finally be able to reveal Splitgate Kart Deluxe to the world

I'm very excited to get on stage soon so I can officially unveil Splitgate Valley, our cozy co-op farming sim

So close!! We're fewer than 50 reviews away from hitting "Mostly Positive" on Steam after all the server issues in the first couple days of the Open Beta. I'll be crossing my fingers that we get there soon and head into launch with some good energy.

Hi all, the team is still hard at work on the Beta issues, but we wanted to give everyone a quick update now with a more detailed one from Ian coming later. We have pushed fixes for XP gains and recovering store purchases & Twitch Drops. These are rolling out in real time so some players will already have received the fixes, while others will get them soon. We'll have more to share once everything is up and running fully, but wanted to let you know where we are at right now. We are also committed to doing right by you. We want to make sure everything is working before making any specific promises, but rest assured we will do right by you in more ways than one : 🟠 Increased XP 🟠 Bonus Battle Pass progress 🟠 Exclusive gifted items Sorry again that this is taking longer than expected. We're trying to be very careful and thorough before deploying to live, and these things take time. We appreciate the patience and I can absolutely confirm that the dev team is hard at work.

I hope your team never has to experience what it's like to have years of your work ripped away in an instant. I hope your social media manager doesn't have to wake up overwhelmed by anxiety, wondering if they'll be able to afford healthcare soon. Absolutely disgusting.

After wrestling with the decision a ton, yesterday was my last day at 1047 Games. I absolutely loved the team around me and will be rooting hard for Splitgate 2 to make a comeback. There's some great stuff being cooked up that I'm excited for everyone to see eventually. Ultimately, this choice was made entirely for personal reasons. I'm hoping to start a family soon and the current state of the games industry has been a major source of financial anxiety recently. A role opened up outside of games that I feel is just too good of an opportunity to turn down. I'm crossing my fingers I have the chance to work on another game again in the future. Until then, it's been a pleasure 🫡

Depending on your friend group, Barotrauma is either going to be S or F with no possible in-between

Did he actually call it the CS killer at some point?

Praying this backfires so the dream of Golden Guardians vs BDS at MSI is still alive

What would be your picks for the best (or worst) possible skin collabs in Splitgate? Give me your truly off the wall pitches here

Bioshock, come on now

Yeah but that doesn't spark as much outrage. Clickbait without context is what gets upvotes.

Man, it's been really hard to sleep tonight. Soon we'll start to find out if everything we did for @SpectreDivide 2.0 was enough, and no matter the outcome, I love this team and this game so damn much.

🥹

"I love the team at Mountaintop, by the way. They are freaking GAMERS." -@shroud I'm adding this to my resume immediately

The Closed Beta data and feedback we received was super encouraging and has given us a lot of confidence in launching the game quickly. There's still plenty to polish and more pieces to add, but we're excited for you to be able to play during Season 0 while we're hard at work :)

If you played in the @SpectreDivide Closed Beta, what were the highlights and lowlights for you? I want to hear everything that's stuck with you now that it's over 👇

I need hot takes: what's the ideal enemy outline color in @SpectreDivide? Is it Orange, Green, Purple, or Cyan? Is there a custom color you found that's better than all the defaults?

I'm so thankful for this whole team 🥹

Blazing hot take after 3 days at 1047 Games with zero bias in any way: Splitgate 2 is an absurdly fun game

I think you're missing some context on what this meme is used for...

Every time without fail lol

It's SENIOR Community Manager smh

I too was skeptical that we could make a Splitgate rhythm game work when I first heard about it, but I'm a full believer now

It's been a challenging few months, but I'm seriously proud of everything the team's been working on since launch🥹 I'll have a lot more to share in the coming weeks and I'll be crossing my fingers for the comeback

"DLC is now eligible to win GOTY" yet they snub the most culturally significant DLC of the past decade

There's truly never a dull moment in game development lol. Thank you again to everyone for being understanding and kind to the team as we work through everything. It sucks to have these issues but man, every game I played today was so damn fun. Can't wait for more soon

Sorry to everyone whose replies were hidden as I fixed typos 🥲 I promise I'm reading through every one of them and appreciate the support immensely

The positivity from the community over the past weeks has sincerely been a joy to see

Wait a second, hosted by who???

She doesn't even know that @SpectreDivide, the new tac shooter from Mountaintop Studios powered by Duality, launches on Steam today entirely for free

RIP to those that spent money on mobile

Excellent work team. Posting a list this ridiculous is outstanding engagement bait

You really weren't exaggerating when you called that summer surprise a massive one. My mind was blown

I have never once seen an AI summary on a stream that accurately explained what was happening or provided anything of value I'd love a way to turn these off completely :)

If you want to hunt the devs in Splitgate, I'm going to make you work for it 😤

PC CREATORS - If you're be interested in capturing some early @SpectreDivide Season 1: Flashpoint gameplay footage on mouse and keyboard, shoot me a DM here or message mt.brodrian on Discord. Embargo will be lifting on Feb 25 @ 9:00 AM Pacific Time when the update drops!

If you saw this and are thinking about commenting, "lol dead game," please do that so more people see this trailer. Thanks!

You're so right bro. These characters are beyond hideous. You are a games marketing genius.

Hello, please tag anyone awesome who's been streaming or creating content for @SpectreDivide below so I can rack up some more follows 👇

Guys I figured out who was supposed to host that thing

ok someone REALLY messed up on this one. completely just leaked that their next launch is an OFFICIAL GLORIOUS CAT????

Every time I look at the @SpectreDivide Steam Page: "Wow, I can't believe one of our in-game screenshots is me topping a leaderboard. I'm literally the best." ... "Oh yeah, the next screenshot is me getting absolutely demolished for ego-peeking mid. I suck lmao."

Thank you Splitgate 2 whose next Open Beta begins on 5/22 and can be played for free on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S & Xbox One

READ MY BLOG POST OR ELSE But seriously, I'm actually so excited about some of what we have in store. The core community of Spectre is full of some truly incredible people and we're going to make sure we do right by you all 😤

Logical Increments is an awesome site for this. Shows different builds for every price point and you can jump straight to NASA tier logicalincrements.com/

Canal was my favorite map even back when it was nearly all gray boxes. The absurdly high quality of the environmental art widened that lead even more. This is my personal highlight of Season 1 and I think it will be for a lot of players as well :)

This set is a major favorite of mine. The unique models, VFX, animations, and recolors are all some of the best work I've seen from the team

It's been an absolute joy to pour the last two and a half years into this project. 🥹 I'm unbelievably excited for everyone to be able to experience the mind-blowing moments Spectre makes possible.

Trolls posting that they're happy the game died will never understand that a single reply like yours cancels out a thousand of theirs to me. Thank you you so much for the support and I mean it when I said I'm so glad it resonated with you the way it did for us

Hey Riloe, I really appreciate the repost and your thoughtfulness in that. I'm incredibly grateful for all the kind words and support that have been pouring in 🥹 Thanks for checking out Spectre and being part of that journey

Your Spectre content deserved more eyes on it than it ever received. You should know that every single video you dropped was immediately shared in the Mountaintop Slack and we'd discuss each one without fail. A lot of bigger creators gave Spectre a shot but never stuck with it long enough to find the magic. It genuinely brought us a ton of hope to see you sticking with it and making content for the game. I'm so thankful that the community has those videos and highlights to look back on. Hell, our whole studio is glad that WE forever have those things to remember the game by. Sincerely, thank you for the incredible support. You killed it and few people can say they did as much for the game as you did.

Hey @bitwitkyle! I'm the community manager over at Glorious and would love to get you set up :) DMs open any time

Extremely excited to share that I've started a new position as Community Manager for Mountaintop Studios! 🎊 Competitive online games have always been a passion and the team at @itsmountaintop is building a truly special one. Can't wait to share more about it :)

Heads up that this is an official account we'll be using to share server/maintenance news for @SpectreDivide Highly recommend a follow if you're interested in that!

Excited for my first stream with the team! Come say hi

Please say TL Please say TL

BRB popping the champagne

I was SCAMMED wrote a note for someone who's actually in FLEX BATCH. This is unacceptable, and I have taken appropriate measures to punish this behavior.

Absolutely pathetic

Sadly no, our CEO leaked that it was a PvP Dating Sim because he forgot to turn off his discord status during a playtest

When I was in high school, I was hopelessly addicted to Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3. I didn't have many friends that played, so I found a recruiting forum online for Battlefield clans and tried out for a couple of them. I ended up joining one and spent several years pouring my freetime into that community. By the end I was helping run it. That experience directly led to me getting involved with gaming communities on Reddit, which then eventually led to me running official Riot Games Discord servers. Those years running large VAL/TFT communities were one part of why I was able to break into games marketing at my last job. My last job gave me the work experience I needed to land this role at Mountaintop. A decade later, I'm no longer in touch with anyone from that Battlefield clan I played in. I don't look back with sadness now, though. I smile every damn time I think about that community. This closure hurts like hell for all of us and I feel like a part of me is missing too. A lot of us do. I just hope that eventually you'll be able to look back with that same perspective where the positivity flood out the loss. You never know what doors will open as a result of the connections and experiences you had with Spectre. I know there's good stuff ahead.

Hey Spectre creators, please shoot me a DM if you or anyone you know receives a YouTube copyright strike from "Mountaintop Studios, Inc." I haven't had to issue a strike from our channel since June and this is very likely from a troll impersonating the organization. Fun times.

Also worth noting that opening up the board does not void the warranty!

I need you to know that after your first few times playtesting, a lot of us replaced "high-skill players" with "truo" in our vocabularies 😂 It wasn't, "How would buffing that weapon affect high-skill lobbies." It was often, "What would truo do with that buffed gun?" Your stats were legitimately used as a very helpful baseline to determine if someone was cheating. "On this chart you can see the reported player's stats over the last 20 matches and then here's truo to compare against." For many of us, you one of the very first players who made us think OH SHIT, there is some serious competitive potential here. We had hoped that would be the case, obviously. Seeing is believing. I'm sorry we weren't able to give you more opportunities to show those skills off. Your streams were some of my very favorites and, at least in my mind, you'll forever be the #1 Spectre player to ever swap bodies and click heads. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for all the great memories, candid feedback, and passion.

I had a blast streaming some Spectre last night with friends and some other devs while raising money for Child's Play. Come say hi if you feel like it :) twitch.tv/brodrian

Huge W for @steazEcs for beating the first player to reach Champion Rank in a Casual match a couple days ago!! 🤯

Hold leadership accountable.

I heard a rumor that everyone who helped write this blog post is super attractive and cool

Posted our gameplay teaser to facebook and within 30 seconds someone had already commented, "valorant from temu" Years of hard work have led up to this triumphant moment 😤😤

Creators & Press - Shoot me a DM if you're at all interested in tac shooters 👀 Playtests are ramping up and I'd love to make sure you get a chance to check this project out.

Betty is one of the most genuine, fun, and passionate people I've had the pleasure of getting to know since starting my work at Glorious. I hope from the bottom of my heart that she receive an overflow of positivity from her community and others around her.

My face right now

My grandparents and will be supporting the horse as long as LCS is around.

Some pretty sweet drag clicking on the Model O Wireless from @zJetYT after this update 👀

Supporting you regardless of where the rest of this split takes you

NO, I DID NOT SAY IT WAS OK TO RETWEET THIS FROM OUR MAIN GLORIOUS ACCOUNT. PLEASE, MERCY. I CAN ONLY WRITE SO FAST

You do not make the hobby better for ANYONE by gatekeeping, telling others their preferences are wrong, and directing personal insults at creators. All it accomplishes is driving new members of the community away and making others scared to express their thoughts freely.

Always love hearing the two of them together honestly. Super interesting perspectives!

Tomorrow's show, yup! The full game will be launching shortly after after the reveal. Stream starts at 2 PM Pacific Time

I absolutely adore the approach House House took with this trailer. It's incredibly authentic, endearing, and fully focused on what makes their game a joy to play. Truly great vibes from start to finish and I want more of this.

It's shocking to me seeing people say the game is too much of a grind when it's been out for 2-3 days. The weekly chests are a big part of progression that no one has been able to open up yet.

You can definitely expect to see new weapons, equipment, perks, etc. for the current three factions. Still TBD on whether we'll add more in the future. We're feeling good about 3 right now

I'll also be responding to questions, so feel free to ask about my areas of expertise: Factorio, Kendrick Lamar albums, League of Legends esports, 10h long YouTube video essays, etc. (or Spectre)

Eternals are definitely some of the most absurd monetization in recent memory.

Politicians still blaming video games for everything in big 2025

Shared a version of this on Reddit for those interested: teddit.net/r/Splitgate/comme…

❤️

Creators - you're completely free to co-stream this tournament tonight if you want to watch with your communities!

Some hefty misinformation here. I'm a mod in the official Valorant, TFT, and Legends of Runeterra servers. I also help run /r/LegendsOfRuneterra and /r/TeamfightTactics. Not under NDA for any Riot server/sub that I've been involved in, but that's not as exciting of a story.

This is awesome! Someone should make a whole game around this mechanic 🤯