Highguard, which was announced with great fanfare at the Game Awards, is being pulled. And, of course, the entire internet has opinions on the matter.
Highguard is over. This was announced by the remaining developers at Wildlight in an official statement on X (formerly Twitter). They said they had not managed to build up a sufficient player base and would be shutting down the servers on March 12, 2026.
Highguard thus lasted exactly 31 days longer than the infamous Concord.
Many voices had predicted an extremely short lifespan for Highguard even before its release. The game had been hotly contested since its reveal at the 2025 Game Awards: organizer Geoff Keighley had shown it as the final reveal of the show, according to him out of personal enthusiasm – the developers reportedly did not pay anything for the coveted slot.
After the reveal, there was complete silence about the game for weeks. No advertising, no posts on social media. It was only in the last few days before launch that new information about Highguard was released. According to the developers, a surprise release was originally planned before the offer came from the Game Awards organizers.
The audience reacted with widespread confusion and ridicule. To many, Highguard looked like just another generic multiplayer shooter that would have little chance of competing with the established big names. Not without reason, as it now turns out.
What went wrong?
The Wildlight statement does not delve deeper into Highguard’s problems, but strives to maintain a positive tone. Since its launch, two million players have tried out the shooter.
— Highguard (@PlayHighguard) March 3, 2026
Link to Twitter content
In fact, just under 100,000 people were playing the game on Steam at the same time when it was released. However, that number dropped rapidly, and in the past 24 hours, there were only 460 players, according to SteamDB. charts/“>according to SteamDB, the number has fallen to just 460. And some of that is likely to be disaster tourism after the announcement of the game’s demise.
This is hardly surprising, given the user reviews on sites such as on Steam, Highguard does not fare well, with only 45 percent giving it a positive rating.
The statement on the shutdown goes on to say that the development team is looking forward to delivering one more final update. Whether this popular PR phrase reflects the true mood at Wildlight remains to be seen. What is certain is that cancellations were announced just two weeks after the release. Many saw the fact that the game’s website was no longer accessible as an omen of the approaching end.
So it’s clear: although the free-to-play shooter was created by industry veterans (from Apex Legends, Titanfall, and Call of Duty), like so many other games in this genre, it has failed miserably. It now follows games such as Crucible and Concord into the eternal shooter hunting grounds. The exact financial losses are not known – according to insider information, the mega-corporation Tencent is said to have invested during development.
How people are reacting
From the outset, Highguard received more criticism than praise – except from Geoff Keighley, who publicly championed the game even after his show at X and expressed confidence in its success.
Of course, there is no shortage of mockery on social media, but many are also reacting with regret, such as the well-known CoD streamer ModernWarzone:
This is sad for so many reasons.
On X, Highguard’s Game Director Chad Grenier shared more info about the game . According to him, the PS5 was the platform with the most players for Highguard, with most players coming from the US and Japan.
When asked by a user why they weren’t following the planned roadmap for the rest of 2026 to see if Highguard could recover with new content, writes:
No money to hire anyone to work on it, unfortunately.
At launch, Highguard only offered a 3v3 mode in PvP, which many loudly criticized. 5v5 matches were quickly added, but they couldn’t save the day either. According to the roadmap, new playable characters, new maps, new bases, new weapons, new mounts, and so on were supposed to be released every two months.
