A designer has claimed that “most” of the workforce behind free-to-play shooter Highguard has been laid off, weeks after it launched.
Alex Graner, a designer who’s labored on Apex Legends and Battlefield 6, made the declare in a LinkedIn publish on Wednesday. The publish was shared by a number of different Highguard builders, together with audio director Brad Snyder, and producer Amélia Almeida.
VGC has requested Wildlight Leisure for remark.
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Wildlight has confirmed it’s made an unspecified variety of layoffs.
“At this time we made an extremely troublesome resolution to half methods with a variety of our workforce members whereas conserving a core group of builders to proceed innovating on and supporting the sport.
“We’re pleased with the workforce, expertise, and the product we’ve created collectively. We’re additionally grateful for gamers who gave the sport a shot, and people who proceed to be part of our group.”
“Sadly, together with many of the workforce at Wildlight, I used to be laid off in the present day,” he wrote. “This one actually stings as there was lots of unreleased content material I used to be actually trying ahead to that I and others designed for Highguard.”
Highguard, the debut recreation from Wildlight Leisure, 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 weeks of silence, it launched as a free-to-play title for PC and consoles on January 26 and appeared to get pleasure from a robust begin. The sport initially attracted practically 100,000 concurrent gamers on Steam, and entered the highest 20 video games in weekly lively customers on each US PlayStation and Xbox platforms, in accordance with Circana.
Nonetheless, the sport acquired combined consumer opinions on Steam after launch, and by February, Highguard’s concurrent gamers had dropped to fewer than 5,000, regardless of a latest massive content material drop.
California-based Wildlight Leisure contains veterans from Respawn who labored on the Apex Legends and Titanfall franchises, in addition to former Name of Obligation builders. In line with LinkedIn, the corporate has over 100 staff.
Wildlight had detailed a 12 months of post-launch content material for Highguard and launched the sport’s second ‘episode’, with new maps and gadgets, simply final week.
With nearly all of customers entranced in huge, established stay service video games like Fortnite and Name of Obligation, new stay service launches like Highguard are riskier than ever, particularly with the hundreds of thousands in funding required to construct them and their post-launch roadmaps.
Essentially the most notable failed launch in recent times was Sony’s Harmony, which was shut down two weeks after its launch, regardless of important funding from PlayStation.
Talking to Polygon forward of launch, Wildlight’s studio head, Chad Grenier, claimed that he wasn’t involved about reaching massive participant numbers. “Whether or not it will get a thousand individuals or 100 million individuals, it doesn’t matter. What issues most is that the sport is liked by the individuals who performed it,” he mentioned.
In the identical interview, CEO Dusty Welch shot down the notion of “shooter fatigue” amongst gamers. “The metrics, the info exhibits there’s extra play time with extra monetization taking place… Shooters as a class proceed to be the rocket gasoline that propels the gaming house.”
