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Highguard<\/em>, the live-service multiplayer shooter that was announced at the Game Awards 2025, is shutting down on March 12. Developer Wildlight Studios shared that the game would be winding down alongside details of its final update, which include a new character, weapon and skill trees.<\/p>\n “Today we\u2019re sharing difficult news. We have made the decision to permanently shut down Highguard<\/em> on March 12,” Wildlight Studios shared via a statement on the Highguard<\/em> X account. “Since launch, more than two million players stepped into Highguard<\/em>\u2019s 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 12. We hope you\u2019ll jump in with us one more time to show your support and get those final great matches in while we still can.”<\/p>\n When Highguard <\/em>shuts down next week, it will have been available to play for a grand total of 46 days. That’s longer than the two weeks Concord<\/em> received, but tragic for an online multiplayer game that was still in some form of active development. Wildlight Studios laid off some of its staff not long after Highguard<\/em> launched, but a smaller team of developers has been supporting the game with new content since then, adding things like a “5v5 raid mode” and today’s final update.<\/p>\n While it’s easy to chalk up Highguard<\/em>‘s failure to a shrinking appetite for live-service games or an inability to find an audience for the game’s mix of competitive hero shooter and MOBA strategy mechanics, the reality is more complicated. The first hint that Highguard<\/em>‘s launch might be troubled was the dearth of information or marketing shared about the game after its debut at the Game Awards. Wildlight Studios’ staff was full of former Respawn employees who shadowdropped Apex Legends<\/em> to great success, and Bloomberg<\/em> reports Wildight’s executives thought they could pull off something similar with Highguard<\/em>. The difference is, little was known about Apex Legends<\/em> until after it launched, while players had over a month to stew on the Highguard<\/em> trailer and form all sorts of opinions.<\/p>\n Wildlight’s inability to keep players coming back \u2014 SteamDB shows the game peaked at over 97,000 concurrent players and is now sitting at around 300 \u2014 also hurt its chances. Dwindling player counts reportedly played a role in one of Wildlight’s investors, Tencent, pulling funding, which reduced the runway the studio had to continue working on the game and likely prompted its layoffs. It would be simple if the lesson here was for future studios to give up developing online multiplayer games, but it really seems like not one, but all of these elements led to Highguard<\/em>‘s ultimate demise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n