People may remember Highguard as the final game reveal for the 2025 The Game Awards back in December. The game was met with tepid reception because many people were expecting a big known franchise, and not a cheap-looking free-to-play hero shooter.
Despite being free-to-play, the player numbers started to dwindle just 24 hours after launch. Highguard peaked with around 100,000 players on its first day, but then the player count started to fall like dominos.
Since the game is free-to-play, it needed lots more players to purchase cosmetics and stuff like that to keep the game afloat. Sadly, it looked like nobody cared and keeping a large staff with little revenue wasn’t going to last very long.
Highguard’s developer, Wildlight Entertainment, posted on X the sad news of layoffs:
“Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game.
We’re proud of the team, talent, and the product we’ve created together. We’re also grateful for players who gave the game a shot, and those who continue to be a part of our community.”
It will be interesting to see how long the game will last after losing most of its staff.
