Developer Wildlight Entertainment has announced that its free to play shooter Highguard will end service and shut down on March 12. This comes just 45 days after its launch on January 26. The developer cited not being able to “build a sustainable player base to support the game long term” as the reason. For now, Highguard remains available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam.
In a recent report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, citing employees at the studio, Wildlight Entertainment was revealed to be “out of money” during a February 11 meeting with leadership, despite recently having what was described as sufficient “financial runway”. The report states that Tencent, believed to have been a secret financial backer of the studio, pulled its funding due to Highguard’s low player retention and overall poor commercial performance. It also claims that fewer than 20 developers remain on the project. According to Schreier’s sources, some developers who left the claimed “hubris” in how leadership handled the title. For now, Wildlight Entertainment continues to support Highguard with updates.
Wildlight Entertainment announced last month that it laid off several staff members while retaining “a core group” of employees, just two weeks after the launch of Highguard. Former level designer Alex Graner posted on LinkedIn that he was laid off along with “most of the team at Wildlight.”
The full message regarding shut down news:
Today we’re sharing difficult news. We have made the decision to permanently shut down Highguard on March 12.
Since launch, more than two million players stepped into Highguard‘s world. You shared feedback, created content, and many believed in what we were building. For that, we are deeply grateful.
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 12. 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 team is excited to release one final game update to enjoy in the remaining life of the game. We’ll be adding a new Warden, a new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees! Full patch notes are coming, and we’re targeting tonight or tomorrow morning for patch release.
From all of us at Wildlight, thank you for playing, for supporting us, and for being part of Highguard‘s story.
