The Fall and Death of Highguard

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It’s become a disheartening pattern: in recent years, I’ve watched several live-service games – like Concord and Anthem – get canceled. Now, Wildlight Entertainment’s Highguard is joining them, shutting down on March 12th, just 45 days after its initial release. It’s a situation many predicted, and sadly, it’s come true.

It might be surprising, but the creators of Wildlight have announced that the game, including Highguard, will be closing down. Despite having over two million players and continued development efforts, they haven’t been able to maintain a large enough player base for the game to continue long-term. A final update is currently being released, adding a new character class (Warden), skill trees, a new weapon, and account leveling, but servers will eventually be shut down.

Wildlight encouraged players to enjoy the game one last time and thanked them for their support and for being a part of the Highguard community. They expressed gratitude for everyone playing and helping to create the game’s story.

I sympathize with the developers – the artists, programmers, animators, and everyone else – who dedicated years to this project, especially those who lost their jobs right after it launched. It’s disheartening when something you’ve poured so much effort and personal sacrifice into – like time with family, hobbies, or even your health – doesn’t succeed.

When I hear Wildlight discuss “Highguard’s story,” I can’t help but feel like this was predictable. It just makes me wonder who wasn’t expecting this all along.

Let’s set aside the fact that many live-service games from big companies like EA and Riot Games haven’t been successful. We can also ignore the smaller games, such as Knockout City and Supervive, that were discontinued. Even Sony, despite selling nearly 100 million PS5 consoles, announced plans for a dozen live-service games but has already cancelled or shut down eight of them – and all within just three years. For now, let’s just put all of that aside.

Honestly, who watched Highguard at The Game Awards – with all its strange and clashing concepts – and genuinely believed it would become a popular, ongoing live-service game? If you did, I’m pretty sure I could sell you a pointless insurance policy, like fire coverage for a house in Antarctica. I’d be amazed if anyone thought it could last even a single year.

It wasn’t just that the game was announced last, disappointing fans hoping for titles like Half-Life 3 or Grand Theft Auto 6. Right from the start, Highguard seemed bland and unoriginal, even though the developers at Wildlight Entertainment later claimed it would be a truly unique competitive shooter.

After a rocky initial reveal, the game deliberately stayed quiet for a while, though host Geoff Keighley kept mentioning it, which didn’t really help. When it finally launched, I hoped the earlier negative attention would actually make people curious to try it. It was a free-to-play competitive shooter with attractive visuals, and perhaps the first trailer didn’t fully explain how the game worked. Whatever the reason, it managed to attract nearly 98,000 players on Steam at its peak.

Ultimately, Highguard needed to deliver engaging gameplay, but it fell far short. A typical round involved setting up defenses, gathering resources with mounts and mining, opening chests (and sometimes capturing supply drops), fighting for control of the Shieldbreaker, raiding the enemy base, and planting bombs on their generators – avoiding the risky, match-winning stone – before retreating. Beyond being repetitive, that was essentially the entire experience. The characters’ abilities didn’t compensate for their bland personalities, and the weapon types and loot system felt equally uninspired. It felt like a messy combination of Rainbow Six Siege, Fortnite, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Valorant – overloaded with features, yet strangely empty.

Honestly, as much as I enjoyed the gunplay and how my character moved in Highguard, the game just felt… empty. You’d expect such huge maps to be filled with stuff to do – maybe some story missions, or interesting places to explore. But it wasn’t like that at all. The maps were just… big and bare, like leftover ideas that never really came together. It felt like a lot of wasted space, and I was really hoping for more to do in that world.

The game initially received a very negative reception on Steam, and some suggested this was due to a coordinated effort by players leaving unfair reviews after only a short time playing. While that may have been true at first, the overall rating has improved significantly over the past 45 days, now landing at a ‘Mixed’ rating of 46%. Even the most recent reviews are generally mixed, with a 62% positive rating.

Ultimately, the game’s rating didn’t matter because not enough people were playing. Even if players were willing to deal with the problems and enjoy it, the numbers quickly dropped. In just one day, Highguard went from nearly 97,000 players online at the same time to under 40,000. It lost another 20,000 players the next day, and after a week, it was down to around 13,000. Now, it struggles to even reach 1,000 players.

Look, Wildlight has been working so hard to turn things around. They’ve been constantly updating the game, trying everything they can think of. They even rolled out a limited-time game mode that switched things from 3v3 to 5v5, and when people liked it, they made it a permanent change. New characters, a cool wolf mount, fresh bases, new maps… they even completely reworked how the game plays! The update before that tried removing mining altogether, just to get everyone straight into the action. But honestly? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t just that the game lacked something to grab you, it felt like Highguard just didn’t have any heart.

Two weeks after its launch, Wildlight significantly reduced its staff, keeping only a small team to maintain and update the game. Shortly after, the official website went offline temporarily for redesign and streamlining. Around the same time, speculation arose that Highguard wasn’t independently funded, but instead received investment from TiMi Studio Group, a company owned by Tencent.

Even though my previous comments might seem critical, people who’ve worked at the company – both currently and in the past – shared similar concerns with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. They found the gameplay was too complicated, even though testing within the company had been positive. Matches weren’t as good without voice chat, and leadership apparently didn’t want to do public testing, preferring to release the game unexpectedly, similar to how they launched their last major title.

Former employees say the issue stemmed from overconfidence. The team seemed to believe that because launching a free-to-play game with streamer previews worked in 2019, it would work again in 2026, even if their plans shifted to just showing a trailer at The Game Awards. This thinking is described as unrealistic.

The recent layoffs happened because Tencent stopped providing funding. Highguard didn’t achieve its performance goals, so employees who thought the company had enough money to continue operating were unfortunately let go.

Honestly, looking at what happened with Highguard, I’m not sure there’s much to learn that we didn’t already know. I keep asking myself, who actually thought this would succeed? It feels like we’re stuck in a cycle where the same few live-service games dominate everything – Destiny is still going, but even it has problems, and Marathon, which everyone was excited about, is already getting a lot of criticism. Even Valve, with massive free-to-play hits like Dota 2, is being super careful with Deadlock, testing it with a limited group before a wider release. And even if Deadlock is way more fun and unique than all the failed live-service games of the past ten years, it’s going to be a real struggle to get people to even try it. It’s just a tough market right now.

Despite everything, games like Highguard will always get made as long as there’s potential for profit. History tends to repeat itself, and some things just can’t be avoided.

Please be aware that the opinions shared in this article belong solely to the author and don’t reflect the official stance of GamingBolt.

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2026-03-05 15:44