“Highguard”, which is full of shadows from “Concord”, has officially announced that it will permanently shut down its servers on March 12, 2026. From its launch in January 2026 to the announcement of its discontinuation, the entire life cycle was less than two months, but it was still much longer than the two weeks of “Concord”!
Part of the reason is that the game was dug out by players and media soon after its launch. The Wildlight team actually includes many developers who have participated in Sony’s controversial work “Concord”. With the shadow of “Concord”‘s collapse still lingering, “Highguard” was quickly labeled “Concord 2.0”.
Official confirmation: Server will be closed on March 12
Wildlight Entertainment Announced via official X (Twitter) account, “Highguard” will shut down all servers on March 12, 2026. In a statement, the development team thanked the player community for their support since the game was launched, and stated that it would still release the final update before the server is shut down.
Although the game attracted more than 2 million players to try it in a short period of time, the development team said that the game was never able to establish a player community that could be sustained for a long time, so the decision to discontinue the game was ultimately made.
The Game Awards finale, but the popularity only lasted a few weeks?
“Highguard” was originally announced during the finale “One More Thing” session of The Game Awards 2025. This position is usually reserved for new heavyweight games, so many players had high expectations for this game at the time.
Developer Wildlight also has a pretty impressive background. The studio members come from well-known shooting game teams, including “Apex Legends”, “Titanfall” and “Call of Duty”. The game did attract a lot of attention when it launched in January 2026. The number of simultaneous online players on Steam was close to 100,000, and the overall number of players also exceeded 2 million.
But the enthusiasm quickly faded. A few weeks after launch, player numbers dropped rapidly, with SteamCharts data showing a continued decline in active players, and the game quickly lost market buzz.
The game was questioned for reusing materials from “Concord”
Another player response to “Highguard” is: “We already have too many hero shooters.”
In the past few years, the market has been dominated by works such as “Overwatch”, “Apex Legends”, and “Valorant”. If new games are not truly innovative, it will be difficult to attract long-term investment from players.
Although “Highguard” has added some features, such as a high-speed movement system, mounted combat, and Raid mode, the overall gameplay still makes many players feel like a patchwork of familiar elements. Players also criticized the game’s confusing rhythm, performance and optimization issues, and unattractive character design.
The most important point is that regardless of character design, painting style, or screen performance, “Highguard” is very similar to “Concord”. Some players even doubt whether it is re-using materials from “Concord”!
The shadow of “Concord” appears again
When it was launched, “Concord” was regarded as an important work for PlayStation to enter the live service market. However, it eventually received a lot of criticism due to character design, gameplay and market positioning issues, and became one of the most representative failure cases in recent years.
When the background of the participation of “Concord” developers was exposed, many players directly called “Highguard” the “spiritual sequel of Concord.” In the case where players’ trust is not high, this label obviously has a big impact on the game’s image.
Layoffs and internal unrest accelerate collapse, final update comes too late
Things took a turn for the worse in February 2026. At the time, it was reported that most of Wildlight’s development team had been laid off, leaving only a few core members to keep the game updated. Wildlight later confirmed that it had indeed laid off staff, but said that it still retained the team to continue supporting the game. However, as the number of players continues to decline, this plan is obviously unsustainable.
Even after announcing the server closure, Wildlight still stated that it would launch the last content update, which will include new characters, new weapons, account level system and skill tree system. These are actually features that players have long awaited. If it could be launched earlier, there might be a chance to extend the life of the game.
But now that it appears, it can only be regarded as the final farewell to the game.