Highguard is now confirmed to be the latest in a long line of failed live-service shooters, after an announcement today.
On Feb. 12, news came out that many developers from Wildlight Entertainment had been laid off, leaving a small team behind to work on updating the game, so this news felt inevitable. And Wildlight announced today that on March 12, the game’s servers will be shut down for good.
“Since launch, more than two million players stepped into Highguard’s world,” the devs said. “You shared feedback, created content, and many believed in what we were building. For that, we are deeply grateful. Despite the passion and hard work of our team, we have not been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long term. Servers will remain online until March 12. We hope you’ll jump in with us one more time to show your support and get those final great matches in while we still can.”
One final game update will be coming between now and the shutdown, adding a new Warden, a new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees, basically just to show what could have been if the title took off like the studio hoped it would.
Arguments about why Highguard failed will continue for a while, but the fact is it couldn’t grab enough players to sustain the business, and so it joins the ranks of many games that attempted to build a playerbase to keep it alive for a while.
When I attended the Highguard hands-on event in LA at the end of January, I never would have thought we’d end up here, at least not so quickly. Everyone in attendance enjoyed the title, shared feedback, and were excited for its launch. What ensued on and after the Jan. 26 release day can only be described as disastrous from the game’s standpoint, despite several timely updates to try and keep players interested.
But in the end, it did not catch on like Wildlight anticipated (for a variety of reasons and mistakes made along the way), and so the devs left in its wake will be forced to find whatever’s next in their own journeys. I wish them all luck in that endeavor.
