On the eve of the closure of “Highguard”, the game director published a long article responding to the failure controversy! Whose is gaining traction fast, and early community reaction suggests this one has real momentum.
As with major stories across retro and modern gaming, the key details are in how players are responding, how the platform owners move next, and whether this remains a short spike or a longer trend.
The free hero shooting game “Highguard” will officially shut down its servers on March 12, 2026. As the game enters the final countdown, Jason McCord, the design director of Wildlight Entertainment, also published a long article responding to the reasons why this work ended in just a few weeks from launch to server closure.
McCord said on LinkedIn that this was an article “that no developer would wish to write.” He admitted that the team was “fighting hard” in an extremely competitive market and trying to make something different from other hero shooting games. “No matter what the result is, I am proud of the team’s efforts.” He also mentioned that after the game was suddenly exposed at the Game Awards last year, the team actually experienced a lot of difficulties, but did not further elaborate on the specific problems.
Coming to an end after seven weeks of launch
“Highguard” launches at the end of January 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. The game actually attracted more than 2 million players to try it in the early days of its launch, but its popularity quickly declined rapidly.
Player data was lost rapidly in just a few weeks, and the community began to speculate about server closure. At that time, the official website of the game suddenly went offline, which made the outside world think that the situation was not good. Although the developer once stated that it was just for maintenance, Wildlight finally officially announced recently that the game will be permanently closed on March 12.
The official reason given is quite straightforward: even if there is a good initial number of players, it has never been able to establish a sustainable player community, making it difficult to maintain the operation of service-based games in the long term.
Game Awards exposure tactics have caused controversy
“Highguard” won the final announced position at the 2025 Game Awards, a position usually reserved for heavyweight works. It is said that the host at the time, Geoff Keighley, was very optimistic about the game after trying it out, and even made it the last announced game at the event.
However, this decision caused a lot of controversy. Many players question why a new IP hero shooter can get the final position, but other more well-known masterpieces do not. When the game was officially launched, the market response was not as enthusiastic as expected.
Layoffs and small team maintenance updates
McCord also mentioned in the statement that Wildlight conducted large-scale layoffs shortly after the game launched. With the number of players declining rapidly, the studio only retained a “core development team” to maintain game operations.
Even so, the team continues to roll out updates. The latest update was launched on March 4, adding an account level system, skill trees, new Warden characters and other content. Unfortunately, these updates still cannot reverse the loss of players.
Competitive orientation is considered one of the reasons for failure
Regarding why the game failed, McCord said in a statement that many of the analyzes put forward by the outside world were “partly correct, and some are completely wrong.”
One of the more commonly cited reasons comes from former developer Alex Garner. The developer, a former senior level designer, believes that Highguard overemphasizes competitive gameplay. When the game was launched, it focused on the 3v3 mode, which he described as “the most hardcore and stressful competitive version.”
This overly competitive design makes the threshold too high for new players, and also causes many casual players to quickly lose.
Another service-oriented shooting game falls
“Highguard” only lasted seven weeks from launch to server closure, which is considered a very short life cycle in the service-oriented game market. In recent years, the competition between hero shooting and live service games has become increasingly fierce. If new games do not have clear features, it will be difficult to retain players for a long time.
From a certain perspective, the ending of “Highguard” once again reminds the entire industry that even developer teams that have participated in masterpieces such as “Call of Duty”, “Titanfall”, and “Apex Legends” may not necessarily succeed in this market.