Wildlight has announced that it will be permanently shutting down Highguard on March 12. Before then, it will release one final update that adds a new Warden, a new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees for those who want to get their final matches in.
Wildlight shared the news on X/Twitter, saying, “Today we’re sharing difficult news. We have made the decision to permanently shut down Highguard on March 12.
“Since launch, more than 2 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 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.
“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.”
Wildlight was first announced at The Game Awards 2025, and it was the big finale for the show. Geoff Keighley had enjoyed what he played of the game, and he then offered the coveted last spot to Wildlight for Highguard.
It didn’t go quite as well as planned, and Josh Sobel, a developer who worked on Highguard before being let go from Wildgate, shared that the game, and by extension its team, “turned into a joke from minute one, largely due to false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement.”
“Within minutes, it was decided: this game was dead on arrival, and creators now had free ragebait content for a month,” Sobel continued. “Every one of our videos on social media got downvoted to hell. Comments sections were flooded with copy/paste meme phrases such as ‘Concord 2’ and ‘Titanfall 3 died for this.’ At launch, we received over 14k review bombs from users with less than an hour of playtime. Many didn’t even finish the required tutorial.”
Highguard did launch on January 26, 2026, and the team at Wildgate stayed very quiet between The Game Awards and its launch day, but the game did start off strong with Steam concurrents reaching nearly 100,000. Unfortunately, it also had a “mostly negative” user review rating on Steam.
Wildgate was quick to address issues with the game, and even added a 5v5 game mode to counter the 3v3 complaints. Shortly thereafter, most of the studio was laid off, but the game kept on.
Reports kept coming out about the game, including how it came to be and that it was quietly backed by Tencent, and now its story will sadly come to an end after 45 days of being online.
We enjoyed what we played of Highguard, and scored it a 7/10.
“Highguard’s compelling gunplay, impressive pace of updates, and killer Raid mode have made its exciting attack-and-defend encounters quite memorable, even if the version we have right now feels a bit like a rough draft,” IGN’s Travis Northup said in his review. “The unique competitive matches definitely have room for improvement, with maps that can feel a little empty and rounds that are somewhat uneven between their slow looting lows and chaotic raiding highs.
“Plus, with just nine characters, a handful of maps and bases, and only one game mode served up in a few different flavors, there’s not a lot of meat on this bone just yet. But what is here at the moment is still a lot of fun on its own, and I can already feel the makings of something that could be pretty stellar if it’s able to survive long enough to fully realize that potential.”
Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.
