'Highguard' To Shut Down On March 12th Due To Poor Player Base

Wildlight Entertainment announced that it will shut down its game Highguard later this month.

In a post to social media, the company announced, “We have made the decision to permanently shut down Highguard on March 12.”

As for why, the company explained, “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 12th. 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.”

The company did add that it did attract more than 2 million players to the game after it launched.

According to SteamDB, the game hit a peak concurrent player count of 97,249 when it was released back in January. That player count rapidly declined with the most recent 24-hour peak only hitting 460.

The game followed nearly the same lifecycle as Firewalk Studios’ Concord despite Wildlight deveelopers claiming that would not be the case back in January.

Concord released back in August 2024 and failed to break 700 concurrent players on Steam. Less than two weeks after its release Sony announced it was shutting the game down and refunding people who purchased it. The game was officially shut down on September 6th and then by the end of October, Sony shut down the game’s developer Firewalk Studios.

Wildlight developers including the company’s co-founder and CEO Dusty Welch as well as Game Director Chad Grenier claimed Highguard would not follow in Concord’s footsteps while making all the same claims that Concord developers made.

Grenier admitted to Variety that the game’s trailer did not help its cause, “I think we do have a very unique game that is unlike anything else out there on the market, and we’re really excited about it. Our trailer didn’t highlight that well, and we’ll own that.”

“But at the end of the day, we’re really excited just to get the game out on Monday and let it speak for itself, because I think that there is quite a bit there, as you’ve seen today, that is unexpected and new and refreshing,” he continued. “And there’s a lot of innovation in the game that wasn’t conveyed well in that one trailer.”

Welch added that he wished the “sentiment had been a little bit better” but acknowledged that “there’s a lot of awareness for the game and for people to show up on 1/26 and play it.”

Firewalk Studios developers made similar comments ahead of the game’s release. The company’s Director of IP Kim Kreines told VGC, “Yeah, that trailer. That moment is such a tiny slice of everything that we’ve been working on for years and years. We’re excited for the game and for the IP, [and] for the game to be in people’s hands, the IP to be in people’s minds.”

“I’m personally very excited for the IP for folks to delve into the galactic guide if that is something they choose to do, for these vignettes to come out on a weekly basis. You’ll start to fall in love with the depth of the characters. That’s something that you learn week to week. Their personalities will unfold, their relationships will unfold for you, their backstories. None of that is something that you can get in a tiny little slice of it.”

“But that’s a start,” Kreines added. “There’s something there. So I’m glad folks watched it. I’m glad they participated and I can’t wait for them to see more, to see everything that is there.”

Speaking specifically to how Highguard is different from Concord, Grenier said, “Concord specifically, they were not a free game. So one thing that we’re hopeful for is that being a free game, people will show up and see that our game is actually locked on, and stick around. We can grow that player base over time.”

He also noted that the team composition is different, “It’s 3v3, so it doesn’t take hundreds of people to start a match, which is in our favor.”

Welch also claimed that they have no plan on shutting the game down, “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.

Concord’s Lead Character Designer Jon Weisnewski made similar comments to PC Gamer as well, “Insanely proud of the game, we’re strapped in and ready to push it for years to come.”

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