Highguard has raided its final fortress, will shutdown on March 12

Highguard, the live-service multiplayer shooter that was introduced on the Game Awards 2025, is shutting down on March 12. Developer Wildlight Studios shared that the sport can be winding down alongside particulars of its last replace, which embrace a brand new character, weapon and talent bushes.

“As we speak we’re sharing troublesome information. We’ve got made the choice to completely shut down Highguard on March 12,” Wildlight Studios shared by way of a statement on the Highguard X account. “Since launch, greater than two million gamers stepped into Highguard’s world. You shared suggestions, created content material, and plenty of believed in what we have been constructing. For that, we’re deeply grateful. Regardless of the eagerness and onerous work of our group, now we have not been in a position to construct a sustainable participant base to help the sport long run. Servers will stay on-line till March 12. We hope you’ll bounce in with us another time to indicate your help and get these last nice matches in whereas we nonetheless can.”

When Highguard shuts down subsequent week, it’s going to have been obtainable to play for a grand whole of 46 days. That is longer than the 2 weeks Concord received, however tragic for a web based multiplayer sport that was nonetheless in some type of lively improvement. Wildlight Studios laid off some of its staff not lengthy after Highguard launched, however a smaller group of builders has been supporting the sport with new content material since then, including issues like a “5v5 raid mode” and right this moment’s last replace.

Whereas it is easy to chalk up Highguard‘s failure to a shrinking urge for food for live-service video games or an incapability to seek out an viewers for the sport’s mixture of aggressive hero shooter and MOBA technique mechanics, the fact is extra sophisticated. The primary trace that Highguard‘s launch is perhaps troubled was the dearth of knowledge or advertising and marketing shared concerning the sport after its debut on the Sport Awards. Wildlight Studios’ employees was filled with former Respawn workers who shadowdropped Apex Legends to nice success, and Bloomberg reports Wildight’s executives thought they might pull off one thing comparable with Highguard. The distinction is, little was recognized about Apex Legends till after it launched, whereas gamers had over a month to stew on the Highguard trailer and type all types of opinions.

Wildlight’s incapability to maintain gamers coming again — SteamDB shows the sport peaked at over 97,000 concurrent gamers and is now sitting at round 300 — additionally damage its probabilities. Dwindling participant counts reportedly performed a job in one in all Wildlight’s buyers, Tencent, pulling funding, which diminished the runway the studio needed to proceed engaged on the sport and sure prompted its layoffs. It might be easy if the lesson right here was for future studios to surrender creating on-line multiplayer video games, however it actually looks as if not one, however all of those components led to Highguard‘s final demise.