- Primary Subject: Highguard (Wildlight Entertainment)
- Key Update: Following a massive drop in concurrent players and a polarizing debut at The Game Awards, Wildlight Entertainment has laid off the "majority" of its staff.
- Status: Confirmed (Employee Reports)
- Last Verified: February 11, 2026
- Quick Answer: Highguard peaked at 97k players upon its January 26 launch but has since plummeted to under 4k daily users. While the game isn't shutting down, most of the development team has been let go.
Developer Wildlight Entertainment, creators of the free-to-play mishmash of different ideas that included MOBAs and hero shooters, Highguard, has been a disappointing flop, leading to the studio laying off the majority of its staff.
Multiple, now former, Wildlight employees have shared via social media, such as X (formerly known as Twitter) and LinkedIn, that they had been laid off. Level Designer Alex Graner revealed that "most of the team at Wildlight" had been let go.
Highguard received massive attention as it was the closing announcement during The Game Awards back in December. It wasn't all entirely positive, as many fans criticized the decision to close out on a seemingly uninspired new hero shooter. Reports then indicated that Geoff Keighley himself handpicked the project to close out the show, which would indicate why the team went radio silent afterwards, as the studio's original idea was to shadow-drop the game.
In any case, the game's launch was far from a success. Sure, it peaked at 97k players when it launched back on January 26, but it quickly lost all steam (no pun intended), sitting at less than 4k concurrent players on any given day now.
Is Highguard Shutting Down?
No, Highguard isn't going anywhere, yet. The developers revealed that a core group will stay on the dev team to "continue innovating on and supporting the game."
In all fairness, Highguard did get some quick updates in order to make the game much more interesting, like the permanent addition of a 5v5 mode, adding two extra team members to each squad. For how long will the game keep getting support? It remains to be seen.
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