Highguard To Shut Down Next Week, Thanks To Woeful Player Count

Massively dwindling player numbers have led developers, Wildlight Entertainment, to announce the imminent closure of Highguard. The competitive raid shooter, which had an unorthodox unveiling and release, will close permanently on 12 March. There will, however, be one final update before the game is shuttered forever.

Highguard hasn’t been around long, but it has had a tumultuous life. What started out as a survival game before transitioning to a competitive shooter hasn’t exactly gone down in a blaze of glory. Rather, it has fizzled out, negatively impacting a large team of skilled developers.

The Beginning (2022)

More than 60 industry veterans came together to form Wildlight Entertainment in 2022. On paper, the team looked very strong with experienced heads from Apex Legends, Titanfall, and Call of Duty.

Initially, Highguard was kept under wraps with the aim of shadow dropping the title, a la Apex Legends. Initially, Wildlight developed the game as a survival shooter to rival Rust.

The Pivot (2024)

After two years of early development, Wildlight changed the nature of the game. Rather than being an open-ended survival game, it became a 3v3 competitive shooter.

Despite the changes, the team was confident it was creating a good game. Reportedly, while they did allow internal and external play testers, Wildlight management refused independent play testing.

The Reveal (11 December, 2025)

A lot of the developers came from Apex Legends, which enjoyed a massively successful shadow drop in 2019.

It launched on the day it was announced and went on to become very popular. The popular title has over a million Steam reviews and still enjoys a daily peak player count of over 200,000 on the platform. It launched with more than 110,000 peak players and saw player count rise steadily before reaching a peak of 600,000 in February 2023.

Wildlight had hoped to emulate this kind of successful launch.

But The Game Awards organiser, Geoff Keighley, offered the team a prime reveal for free, having played an early version of the game.

Rather than helping the game, Keighley’s “one more surprise” reveal was the first nail in the title’s coffin. Many viewers felt the reveal was underwhelming, considering its prime position. And the content published gave little away.

The level of vitriol the game received was uncalled for, but the nature of the reveal meant the game had a lot to live up to.

The Launch (26 January, 2026)

Just over a month later, Highguard launched on 26 January, on Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam. It suffered poor coverage since its reveal, with a ton of players already comparing it to Sony’s failed 5v5 shooter, Concord.

Despite that, it had reasonable launch numbers. At least initially.

According to SteamDB, it had a daily peak of just under 100,000 Steam users on launch day. And it reportedly hit similar numbers on consoles.

But it didn’t take long for that number to drop. A day later, it had a peak player count of 40,000 and a week after launch, just 10,000.  

The Layoffs (11 February, 2026)

In a bid to try and stem the haemorrhaging player count, Wildlight launched an emergency update. The update brought 5v5 competitive play. One of the main gripes players had with the game was that the 3v3 format made maps feel empty and the gameplay lacking.

For the most part, players appreciated the new game type. Unfortunately, though, the damage had already been done. By the middle of February, Steam player count was below 5,000, and the developers announced they were laying off the majority of the 100-strong team that worked on the game.

At the time, they promised they had a year of updates and a skeleton team would continue to support the game.

The Closure (12 March, 2026)

Not only did player count not recover, but it currently sits at under 500 people. Clearly not enough to raise any meaningful revenue for the game.

So, inevitably, Wildlight announced they would shutter the game permanently on 12 March.

While announcing the game’s closure, they did release pretty much all of the year’s upcoming content, and there’s a decent amount for the handful of players who are still in lobbies.

With a stellar team working on the game, Highguard had the potential to become a serious contender in the competitive shooter genre. It could potentially have become an Esports staple. But it clearly didn’t deliver, and its earlier comparisons to Concord now appear highly prophetic.

As Reddit user TF_dia put it, 45 days from launch to closure is 3.75 Concords.