In the wake of Wildlight Entertainment announcing that Highguard is permanently shutting down, studio head and game director Chad Grenier has offered a post mortem on the game through a series of social media posts. Among the key takeaways is the fact that Highguard actually managed to get quite a few players, with Grenier comparing its early player counts with the launch of Apex Legends. He also revealed other interesting statistics, including geographical demographics, and which characters were the most popular.
Highguard managed to get a bit over 2 million players worldwide at the beginning, with the average play session lasting around 91 minutes. Grenier referred to this metric as being “actually quite good,” noting that “on average, a player logged into Highguard and played for 91 minutes. The average games played per session was 3.48 matches per session.”
When it comes to platform splits, PS5 had the most players, clocking in at more than double the number of Xbox and PC players. Microsoft’s console was in second place, with Steam sitting in at third. The majority of players were from the US, with Japan being the game’s second-largest player base.
Grenier also revealed some gameplay facts, including the fact that Scarlet was the most popular character “by a good margin.” Noting that she was originally named Skye, he revealed that she was picked 1.56 million times, which is a considerable lead over the second-most popular character Atticus. When it comes to weapons, the Vanguard proved to be the most effective at taking down enemies, with 11.75 million kills. Most matches ended through the destruction of the generator.
Interestingly, despite the positively-received addition of the 5v5 mode, most Highguard players still seemingly preferred the 3v3 mode it launched with. Grenier has noted, however, that the data doesn’t include the Raid Rush mode. Despite this, 3v3 mode continued to account for over 40 percent of the matches played even after the release of 5v5. He also confirmed that 92 percent of players who started up the raid shooter had completed the training mission. “This is actually a very healthy number, similar to what we saw at launch with [Apex Legends] training completion,” he said.
Wildlight Entertainment announced the end of Highguard through a social media post, where it thanked the players that had given the game a shot and offered feedback. Despite having reached 2 million players, however, the company noted that it couldn’t “build a sustainable player base to support the game long term.” Servers for Highguard are slated to shut down on 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,” wrote the studio.
In the midst of this, Wildlight Entertainment is releasing a final major update for the game, which brings with it a new Warden, weapon, skill trees and account-wide progression. In the meantime, Highguard is still available for free on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, in case you want to give the PvP raid shooter one last shot.
