Troubled free-to-play shooter, Highguard, is formally shutting down, little over six weeks after its high-profile launch, developer Wildlight Leisure has confirmed.
Highguard launched on January 26 following its daring announcement at The Recreation Awards in December, however regardless of initially reaching hundreds of thousands of gamers, in line with its developer, participant numbers shortly plummeted, and Wildlight laid off most of its growth staff the next month.
Now, the California-based studio has confirmed that Highguard will shut down completely on March 12.
In an replace posted on social media, it stated the sport had not been in a position to appeal to sufficient gamers to maintain growth long-term. One last replace might be launched this week, it stated.
“At the moment we’re sharing tough information. Now we have made the choice to completely shut down Highguard on March 12,” Wildlight wrote. “Since launch, greater than 2 million gamers stepped into Highguard’s world. You shared suggestions, created content material, and lots of believed in what we had been constructing. For that, we’re deeply grateful.
“Regardless of the eagerness and arduous work of our staff, now we have not been in a position to construct a sustainable participant base to assist the sport long run. Servers will stay on-line till March twelfth. We hope you’ll soar in with us yet another time to point out your assist and get these last nice matches in whereas we nonetheless can.”
The publish continues: “The staff is happy to launch one last sport replace to get pleasure from within the remaining lifetime of the sport. We’ll be including a brand new Warden, a brand new weapon, account stage development, and ability bushes! Full patch notes are coming, and we’re focusing on tonight or tomorrow morning for patch launch.
“From all of us at Wildlight, thanks for enjoying, for supporting us, and for being a part of Highguard’s story.”
Highguard was introduced with nice fanfare on the shut of December’s The Recreation Awards. Developed by veterans of the hero shooter style, the sport combines FPS mechanics with rideable mounts and ‘raid’ mechanics, with groups tasked with breaching one another’s bases.
After a designer claimed that “most” of the staff had been laid off final month, Wildlight subsequently confirmed that it had let go “a variety of staff members whereas conserving a core group of builders to proceed innovating on and supporting the sport”.
In keeping with a Bloomberg report on Highguard’s growth, gaming large Tencent had quietly funded WIldlight Leisure, and the studio’s preliminary wave of employees cuts got here after the conglomerate determined to tug out, as a result of sport’s comfortable launch.
The shooter had been in growth for a number of years earlier than it was introduced, and had a 12 months of post-launch content material already revealed, earlier than right now’s shutdown information.
Highguard’s failure once more highlights the volatility of the triple-A and reside service video games market. With the vast majority of shoppers entranced in huge, established ‘eternally’ video games like Fortnite and Name of Responsibility, new launches like Highguard are riskier than ever, particularly with the numerous funding required to construct them.
The earlier most notable failed launch was Sony’s Harmony, which was shut down two weeks after its launch in August 2024, regardless of important funding from PlayStation.
