Highguard is closing next week: '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'

Just over a month after it launched, the axe has fallen on the troubled PvP shooter Highguard. Developer Wildlight Entertainment announced today that the game's next update will be its last, and it will be taken offline on March 12.

"Since launch, more than 2 million players stepped into Highguard’s world," Wildlight wrote in an announcement shared on X. "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 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."

Highguard is one of the most notable videogame failures in recent years. It debuted at the 2025 Game Awards in the typically coveted 'just one more thing' slot at the very end of the show, and ironically never really recovered: The reveal trailer didn't make a great impression, the studio's steadfast silence over the subsequent weeks leading up to Highguard's launch only compounded the confusion and doubt, and while the game launched to strong player numbers the audience quickly slipped away: From a peak of more than 97,000 concurrent players on Steam on January 26, just over 200 are playing right now. For a free-to-play shooter relying on in-game marketplace sales, that's just not sustainable.

It's an unfortunate ending, but not a surprising one: Wildlight had already laid off "most of the staff" in February, just 16 days after launch. The studio said at the time that it would "continue innovating on and supporting the game," but with player counts continuing to sag, and Highguard mired in "mixed" user reviews, it's fair to say that a turnaround was never likely to happen.

It's kind of sad that Highguard's final update promises to be a big one, with a new playable character, a new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees. It's a reminder that Wildlight had big plans for the future of the game, and that Highguard itself was neither a bad game nor a massive flop (had expectations been set correctly): It was just overwhelmed in a genre that's already overcrowded by great games.

"From all of us at Wildlight, thank you for playing, for supporting us, and for being part of Highguard’s story," Wildlight concluded. Highguard's final update is expected to be out either tonight or tomorrow morning.