Spectre Divide Having To Reduce Their "Delusional" F2P Shop Prices Just Exemplifies The Manipulations Of F2P

To be clear and fair, everything I am about to discuss below is not unique to Spectre Divide. I have covered F2P games and their cash shops for about 20 years now. The manipulative practices discussed here are used in most F2P titles to some degree and I've discussed them for years, but here we go again.

Spectre Divide hit PCs just yesterday and the F2P tactical shooter found itself subject to "Mixed" reviews right from the start. You might say that's a bit early for players to determine if the game's "Duality" gimmick is interesting enough or not, and you'd probably be right on that front, although reviews did mention the stability of the game and a lot called the game a bit "mid." The splitting up and controlling two characters at a time wasn't the primary complaint in most negative reviews though...it was the cash shop prices that really drew ire from potential players.

Sure, Spectre Divide has a well-known name tied to it in their gameplay advisor Shroud, but the team behind the game is a smaller team that's handling all the publishing themselves. We get it. They have to make money to keep the doors open. No one is begrudging them that. However, the initial asks for some bundles was absurd. In the team's own words they "swung a bit high." In the words of players, the team was "delusional."

Examples? sure, I got you. How about this wonderful bundle of Cryo Kinesis skins shown above? Four gun skins and a melee weapon skin that honestly look like recolorings more than a "new" skin to me, but I'm not 100% sure that's the case. It's price? 9000 Spectre Points, or about $90 USD. Yeah.

OH! And that was originally marked as "On Sale" from the "normal" 12000 Spectre Points (about $120). See why we constantly say that companies putting that "discounted price" flag is just misleading and manipulative? You cannot even BUY 12,000 Spectre Points (SP) in a single SP purchase in the game. The largest bundle they offer is 11,500.

The "you're getting a deal" marking taking the price from 12,000 to 9,000 is the first manipulation. The game has been out for 24 hours now. The team has never once sold that bundle to anyone for 12,000 SP. At BEST, that 12,000 SP original price tells you how much they PLANNED to sell the bundle for at some "non-discounted" future date. At worst, the team never intended to ever sell the bundle at 12,000 SP and was just trying to manipulate you into thinking the 9,000 SP price was a "deal."

Which leads to the classic manipulation of the game's cash shop currency bundles being sold in bundles that are just off center with the common pricing in the game's store. You always somehow end up having to buy just a little more than one currency bundle to get most things, leaving you with a little currency left over to make the next purchase easier. I won't belabor this common F2P tactic here besides to say that Spectre Divide does this like most of their peers do.

Looking at the 1000 SP bundle, you can grab a few skins at that price, but most are either 800 SP, 1200 SP, or 1500 SP causing you to have change either way for that next purchase.

As a slight price comparison, Spectre Divide sells a $70 Founder's Pack which includes 4 weapon skins along with 2 banners, 2 charms, 2 sprays....AND 4300 SP in it.

That's to say nothing of the fact that cash shop prices are arbitrary to begin with from the start. Teams don't think "how much is this actually worth" most of the time. Instead, the people in charge of pricing go in with the mentality of "what is the most we think we can charge for this and have it actually sell." I cannot ascribe these thoughts to the Spectre Divide team specifically since I wasn't brought in as a pricing consultant or anything, I'm speaking generally on this point.

The same trend held true with many bundles and the community just wasn't having Valorant levels of pricing for a game that isn't on Valorant's level in their eyes.

Mountaintop Studios has already reacted and cut the costs of multiple bundles, including the example above. Now you can get that Cryo Kinesis bundle for the low price of 7000 Spectre Points, or about $70. Yeah, I'm still out at that rate, but maybe it's more appealing to others now. There's additional products seeing their prices cut anywhere from 17%-25%.

That said, the new banner (below) for the Cryo Kinesis bundle shows it being "on sale" still, this time at the new 7000 SP price, with an "original non-sale price" of 9800 SP. Again, a price the bundle has sold for exactly zero times. If the price does go up to 9800 after the featured days sale ends, then it is, ironically. once again above the $90 price point players already said was too high. This was also a price the team was willing to very quickly discount based on that feedback from players.

The team's reasoning for the high price points were also mentioned in the reduction post and they are the usual "but it's free" mentality. Since "90% of players would never spend", the team had to factor in the costs for them to self-publish the game based on 10% of players actually buying things. (I.E. They gunned right for the "whales."...I still hate that term.)

Not a good look right out of the gate.

If you purchased any of the discounted bundles before the discount, A) WTF is wrong with you? and B) you'll get a refund for the difference in the way of Spectre Points rounded up to the nearest hundred. Let's set aside that the team HAD to give refunds here since they discounted things within 24 damn hours. This wasn't a "kindness of the heart" moment, but they weren't going to get to keep that "extra money."

But wait, yes they are, thanks to another little manipulation F2P games love to use: you're getting your refund via SP, not the actual cash you spent literally yesterday.

Yep, you'll get currency back that will likely be too small an amount to buy the next thing you want to buy, but it'll make it that much easier to top off your account with a little more cash since you "don't need as much." No way they were giving you cash back.

Again, none of this is unique to Spectre Divide. We see this type of stuff across the board, but that doesn't mean we like seeing it out of a smaller team that thinks they have something unique to offer, then finds themselves bogged down on day 1 due to a pricing backlash.