Wildlight Entertainment, the developer of Highguard, announced layoffs at the company in the wake of the game’s player base completely collapsing.
In a post to X, the company announced, “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,” it continued. “We're also grateful for players who gave the game a shot, and those who continue to be a part of our community.”
The announcement comes in the wake of the game’s player base declining over 96%. It went from an all-time peak of 97,249 when it released at the end of January to just 3,580 in the last 24 hours.
Ironically, Wildlight co-founder and CEO Dusty Welch previously claimed the game would not follow the same path as Sony’s Concord. He informed Variety, “What we’re confident in is that we’re not going anywhere. We’re not going away. We as a team have a lot of experience in building franchises that have staying power. And this one, as Chad alluded to, we have a year’s worth of content that’s near completion that is going to engage an audience for quite a bit of time.”
“So we’re excited to be able to bring that. We have the experience, but that said, we’re humbled, and we hope people love this — but we’re ready to engage with them,” he added.
Obviously, a significant portion of the company’s developers have indeed gone away. And it’s hard to imagine that the player base that is still playing the game will be able to support the game let alone recover the costs it accrued to make the game.
Additionally, there’s even more irony given this announcement to lay off its employees aligns with how Sony shut down Concord. If you recall Sony announced that it was shutting Concord down less than two weeks after it released. Then by the end of October 2024 Sony shut the game’s developer down, Firewalk Studios.
Time will tell if Wildlight Studios shuts down in a similar time frame, but the layoffs came a little over two weeks after the game was released.
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That steep a drop-off indicates to me that the game is not very fun to play, not a good sign for longevity.
I guess their marketing plan didn't work so well. I've barely heard of this game.