Highguard to close down on March twelfth

Wildlight Leisure has introduced that it’s going to completely shut down its free-to-play hero shooter Highguard on March twelfth, 2026.

The live-service sport is being shuttered 45 days after it first launched again in January, with the developer citing that Highguard did not ‘construct a sustainable participant base’.

“At the moment we’re sharing troublesome information,” Wildlight Leisure wrote on social media. “We’ve made the choice to completely shut down Highguard on March twelfth.

“Regardless of the eagerness and arduous work of our workforce, now we have not been capable of construct a sustainable participant base to help the sport long run. Servers will stay on-line till March twelfth.”

In response to the developer’s assertion, the sport will launch a ultimate replace forward of its closure. The patch will carry a brand new playable warden, a brand new weapon, account-level development, and talent timber to Highguard.

In response to information platform SteamDB, Highguard has dropped to a 24-hour peak of 460 concurrent gamers, a fraction of its 97,000 peak when the sport first launched on January twenty sixth, 2026. These numbers don’t mirror participant counts on console platforms.

Highguard has undergone a tough journey because it was first unveiled at The Recreation Awards, presenting itself as a ‘new breed’ of shooter made by former Apex Legends and Titanfall builders.

Following its preliminary trailer, Wildlight Leisure remained silent within the month that adopted, opting to shadow drop Highguard equally to Apex Legends.

Wildlight Leisure had plans to shake up the live-service style, unveiling a year-one roadmap shortly after launch. Nevertheless, the net gaming neighborhood expressed issues surrounding the state of the sport as soon as it launched, with unfavourable critiques flooding Steam en masse.

As participant counts continued to say no, Wildlight Leisure was fast to behave on suggestions, bringing a everlasting 5v5 addition to the sport. Episode 2 was additionally launched in early February, bringing a brand new playable warden, ranked mode and extra to the sport.

16 days after Highguard’s international launch, numerous builders got here ahead to share that they’d been let go from the studio. Shortly afterwards, Wildlight Leisure introduced that it had laid off a major variety of workers, leaving a ‘core group of builders’ to help the sport.

Highguard continued to face difficulties because the playercount continued to say no, with concurrent numbers on Steam dropping to only over 1,300 gamers on February 18th. Moreover, it was reported that Highguard was supposedly backed by Tencent based mostly on alleged insider info acquired by Recreation File.

In the end, Highguard was unsuccessful in securing a gentle and constant following that might help the sport within the long-term, failing to search out its footing in a style full of well-liked live-service aggressive titles.