Highguard, the live-service multiplayer shooter that was introduced on the Sport Awards 2025, is shutting down on March 12. Developer Wildlight Studios shared that the sport can be winding down alongside particulars of its closing replace, which embody a brand new character, weapon and ability timber.
"At this time we’re sharing tough information. We now have made the choice to completely shut down Highguard on March 12," Wildlight Studios shared by way of a statement on the Highguard X account. "Since launch, greater than two million gamers stepped into Highguard’s world. You shared suggestions, created content material, and lots of believed in what we had been constructing. For that, we’re deeply grateful. Regardless of the fervour and arduous work of our group, we’ve not been capable of construct a sustainable participant base to help the sport long run. Servers will stay on-line till March 12. We hope you’ll bounce in with us yet one more time to point out your help and get these closing nice matches in whereas we nonetheless can."
When Highguard shuts down subsequent week, it should have been out there to play for a grand whole of 46 days. That's longer than the 2 weeks Concord received, however tragic for an internet multiplayer sport that was nonetheless in some type of lively growth. Wildlight Studios laid off a few of its workers not lengthy after Highguard launched, however a smaller group of builders has been supporting the sport with new content material since then, including issues like a "5v5 raid mode" and right this moment's closing replace.
Whereas it's simple to chalk up Highguard's failure to a shrinking urge for food for live-service video games or an incapacity to search out an viewers for the sport's mixture of aggressive hero shooter and MOBA technique mechanics, the truth is extra sophisticated. The primary trace that Highguard's launch is likely to be troubled was the dearth of data or advertising and marketing shared concerning the sport after its debut on the Sport Awards. Wildlight Studios' workers was stuffed with former Respawn staff who shadowdropped Apex Legends to nice success, and Bloomberg reports Wildight's executives thought they might pull off one thing related with Highguard. The distinction is, little was identified about Apex Legends till after it launched, whereas gamers had over a month to stew on the Highguard trailer and type all kinds of opinions.
Wildlight's incapacity to maintain gamers coming again — SteamDB exhibits the sport peaked at over 97,000 concurrent gamers and is now sitting at round 300 — additionally harm its probabilities. Dwindling participant counts reportedly performed a task in one among Wildlight's buyers, Tencent, pulling funding, which decreased the runway the studio needed to proceed engaged on the sport and sure prompted its layoffs. It will be easy if the lesson right here was for future studios to surrender growing on-line multiplayer video games, but it surely actually looks as if not one, however all of those parts led to Highguard's final demise.
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