Highguard Shuts Down March 12
Team-based shooter Highguard will officially shut down its servers on March 12, 2026, despite attracting over two million players since launch. Wildlight Entertainment cited the inability to build a sustainable player base as the reason for closure. A final update will go live before shutdown, giving fans one last chance to experience the game.
The game's life will span just 45 days, from its January 26 launch to the March 12 shutdown. After an initial peak of nearly 100,000 concurrent players on PC, the player base plummeted, losing 80% of its players within days and later dwindling to just a few hundred. Wildlight Entertainment was founded by veterans from Respawn Entertainment, known for their work on popular shooters like *Apex Legends* and *Titanfall*. *Highguard* was the studio's debut title, and their initial plan was to "shadow drop" the game with a surprise release, similar to the successful launch of *Apex Legends*. The surprise release strategy was altered when The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley played the game and insisted on featuring it as the final world premiere of the 2025 show. This high-profile reveal was met with a mixed to negative reception from viewers, who criticized it as a generic-looking hero shooter. Following the troubled launch, reports emerged that Chinese tech giant Tencent was the secret primary financial backer of the project. The funding was reportedly contingent on the game hitting certain performance metrics, which it failed to achieve, leading Tencent to pull its financial support just two weeks after launch. This resulted in significant layoffs at Wildlight Entertainment, reducing the team to a small core group.
