Spectre Divide lowers skin prices just hours after launch: 'We took a swing that we thought would best set us up to support the game. Turns out we swung a bit high'

Spectre Divide game director Lee Horn says Mountaintop Studios has «heard your feedback» on the steep costs of the game's characters and weapon skins, and has reduced the costs by 17 to 25%, depending on the skin or bundle in question.

The «feedback» referenced by Horn was put into sharp focus yesterday by staff writer Morgan Park, who pointed out that Spectre Divide's «Cryo Kinesis» skin bundle costed an eye-watering $90, an «insulting» price made more egregious by two points: One, the skins really aren't all that great, and two, he couldn't actually get into the game because of matchmaking bugs. Not a direct connection between the two issues, no, but you can imagine that people would be understandably more sensitive about high-priced cosmetics when the game they belong to isn't working properly.

He wasn't alone on that front. Plenty of Spectre Divide players on Reddit and the community Discord felt the same way, and weren't shy about saying so. Some pointed out that the prices aren't out of line with those of Valorant, which also offers notoriously (some would say obscenely) high-priced skins, but others countered that while Spectre Divide shows a lot of potential, it ain't Valorant. 

«That's a $20 bundle at MOST on a good day,» redditor tehrink wrote about the Cryo Kinesis bundle. «This pricing implies it's a direct competitor to Valorant and it's clearly miles away both in terms features (64 tick servers, no ranked mode on release?) and skin appeal itself.»

The reaction was negative enough to spark price reductions, as well as an automatic partial refund (in Spectre Points, the in-game currency) for anyone who purchased the items before the price cuts. Here's the new pricing:

Spectre Points are purchased in the game at a cost of $5 per 500 points, with increasing discounts as you buy bigger bundles. So for $100, for instance, you get 11,500 points—essentially a bonus of $15.

Horn said Mountaintop Studios settled on the original pricing because Spectre Divide is