It happened alarmingly quickly. The PvP shooter Highguard was released at the end of January with great ambitions. Less than 20 days later, the developers are reporting bad news.
It’s a scenario we’ve seen far too often in recent years, but in the case of Highguard, the speed of the crash seems particularly brutal.
The free-to-play shooter, developed by former Respawn veterans who worked on Apex Legends and Titanfall, was only launched on January 26, 2026. Barely two weeks later, the dream of a new hit service game seems to have already been shattered, as Studio Wildlight Entertainment has initiated a massive wave of layoffs.
“The majority of the team was laid off today.”
The news spread like wildfire on LinkedIn, where affected developers shared their frustration and sadness. Level designer Alex Graner, in particular, found clear words for the situation.
In a post, he explained that he had been laid off along with ”most of the team at Wildlight.” What makes this particularly bitter is that According to Graner, there was already completed but unreleased content that he had been looking forward to seeing released. It is questionable whether this content will ever see the light of day.
Wildlight Entertainment has since announced the layoffs in a official statement on social media, but avoids giving specific numbers.
“Today, we made the incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members, while a core group of developers will remain to continue supporting and working on the game.”
Our assessment: The phrase “core group” sounds very much like minimal skeleton staff, which is necessary to keep the servers running while further development is drastically scaled back. If “the majority” of the creative minds really had to leave, you should probably lower your expectations for future content updates (such as the planned roadmap for 2026) significantly.
From hopeful to problem child
Things looked good for a short time after launch: according to SteamDB, around 100,000 players were simultaneously active on the servers. But disillusionment quickly followed.
Technical problems, criticism of the 3v3 format (which was hastily supplemented by a 5v5 mode), and a general hero shooter fatigue among many players caused the numbers to plummet. In the end, barely 4,000 players were online at the same time – too few for a game that relies on microtransactions and full lobbies.
In addition, the project was ill-fated from the start: its reveal at the 2025 Game Awards in December garnered mostly negative reactions, and the marketing never really managed to generate hype that lasted beyond the first few days after release.
