Spectre Divide launches with outrageous $90 gun skins out the gate, which only makes its broken matchmaking more annoying

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