In a situation you don't see very often, mainly for solidarity and decency reasons, Bad Guitar Studio (FragPunk) has publicly apologised to Mountaintop Studios (Spectre Divide) after mocking the imminent shutdown of its debut title.
Bad Guitar said its since deleted comment, which took the form of a Captain America meme (thanks, PSU), was "insensitive and unprofessional" and "does not reflect our studio’s values or respect for fellow industry peers".
Spectre Divide was released on February 25, 2025, and clearly failed to find an audience in the saturated live service/shooter market. Mountaintop Studios opted to close the game and the studio after just two weeks, refunding players who did buy microtransactions. Meanwhile, FragPunk was just indefinitely delayed on consoles, and that was just 24 hours before it was set to go live.
Obviously, you should never kick someone when they're down; doing so in public, when you work in the same, relatively small industry, seems quite ill-considered. It's worth noting that Mountaintop Studios was an independent team, developing Spectre Divide on its own dime. Bad Guitar Studio, meanwhile, is a subsidiary of Thunderful, which in turn is a subsidiary of NetEase Games, and thus may very well find itself on the chopping block someday.
What do you think of this strange situation? Let us know respectfully in the comments section below.
[source x.com]
Comments 16
Let's see how long this one lasts
What do you gain from bullying a studio with a failed game? Nothing, except looking like unpleasant bullies.
Stupid move, especially when you see the positive public reaction to studios supporting others.
I'm always baffled at how careless some studios are with their social media presence. All it takes is one bad post to stain your reputation. It shouldn't have taken more than five seconds of common sense to realize this one wasn't a particularly bright idea.
A few weeks after release, they will probably get flooded with that meme now.
I’m not trying to be overly negative, but I got a feeling in this game will die just as quickly as the vast majority that have in the last few years.
There are already too many established IP’s with big fan bases that might check it out, but aren’t willing to leave the content they’ve purchased.
They may prove me wrong though.
Don’t worry Fragpunk, you’ll be right there with them once people get bored of the game.
Hell, XDefiant was fun to me and yet that game’s hyped died down quickly. So, it’s more common than rare.
In this GaaS overwhelmed age it is inapropriate to mock someone. Every studio know themselves they are making mistake and waste as many resources as they can by making GaaS that have about 0.0001% to succeed. There is no need to mock them atop.
@Hyena_socks it's an attempt to build an audience with the growing drama obsessed culture built by gaming youtubers. its all punching down
live service ain’t over saturated, First person shooter garbage is .
my bad for being off topic, but screw fragpunk too; tired of all these shooting games , is there really nothing else for multiplayer these days? fragpunk time is coming
> Bad Guitar Studio, meanwhile, is a subsidiary of Thunderful, which in turn is a subsidiary of NetEase Games,
was wondering where you got Thunderful's name in there, because I know for certain that they're not a subsidiary of NetEase—turns out you meant Thunder Fire Games.
This is like going on Takeshi's Castle and pointing and laughing at someone for falling in the river just before you're about to have a go.
The most egregious thing is that it was a poor bastardization of two memes at once.
Give it a year and Fragpunk will be shut down too.
Glass houses and all that.
Whilst completely poor conduct from the devs and definitely leaves a bad taste..
I find the irony of users here quite alarming, when out of order comments from Sony owned developers decided to be antagonistic to studios that were doing well, not even failing.
The weird spiteful comments from Guerilla devs aimed towards Elden Ring... The Alannah Pearce (have I spelled that right?) lies about Game Science during the Game Awards show..
But no... Nothing from y'all on that. I think, simply put, devs should never talk about other devs unless there's something nice to say. Some devs need to remember that they're personally accountable for what they say online, whether that comes from their personal socials or their company socials. Just keep it zipped.
It is kinda funny to see everyone here be so pearl clutching upset over a meme here when most people here were calling for the end of concord and the execution of the devs and then cheering it in the streets when it happened. I guess the difference is that this wasn’t a Sony first party which brings the worst out of weirdos some real tribalism stuff.
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