Similarly, Polish BlueSky user Cal has also reported getting a refund from PlayStation without any request submitted by the user. “It looks like Sony is issuing refunds for Highguard microtransactions on its own initiative,” they wrote (via machine translation). “I didn’t submit any requests or anything, but 59 PLN landed in my account today. Pretty nice of them!”

Further adding to this, ResetEra user RedBullCola has also claimed to have gotten a complete refund for any purchases they had made in Highguard. They have also noted that neither Steam nor Microsoft have made any similar moves, at least for now. It is currently unclear if this is a move by Highguard developer Wildlight Entertainment, or whether Sony is footing the bill by itself.

Wildlight Entertainment had announced that it was shutting down Highguard‘s servers back on March 4th, with shut down happening on March 12th. In the meantime, the studio had continued to work on releasing the final major update for the PvP raid shooter, which was released just a day after the initial announcement. This update brought in major features to the title, including a brand new skill tree and account-wide progression system.

“Since launch, more than two million players stepped into Highguard‘s world,” wrote the studio on social media. “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’ll jump in with us one more time to show your support and get those final great matches in while we still can.”

Leading up to its eventual shut down, several reports development of Highguard had started popping up. Among these was one that noted that the leadership at Wildlight Entertainment had decided to nix any idea of external playtests in the studio’s attempts to capture the lightning that its employees had seen with Apex Legends and its shadow drop when they were still at Respawn Entertainment.

However, while there may have been plenty of issues surrounding Highguard‘s development, the studio was still ultimately described as being “a healthy, collaborative, transparent” one, with unnamed employees saying that they loved working there.

Other reports have indicated that, despite Wildlight Entertainment’s claims of being completely independent, the studio was secretly getting funding from Tencent’s TiMi Studio Group, with the company being described as “the undisclosed lead financial backer” behind the game.

The account levelling system works by simply playing the game. Each match will reward players with XP, and levelling up leads to earning a skill point that can be spent on the skill tree. Players will start out at account level 0, and maxes out at level 100. The first level earned by an account gives five skill points, with following levels giving one each until level 40. This, in entirety, gives players 44 skill points to spend. The skill tree has 4 distinct branches dubbed Raider, Treasure Hunter, Harvester and Protector.

The Raider tree is focused on buffing abilities to enhance general combat efficiency. Abilities in the tree include Infiltration, Juggernaut, and Spearhead. Infiltration allows ziplines to go further into the enemy base during raids. Players with Juggernaut will get a short-duration overshield when destroying a wall. Spearhead gives players access to a Domesplitter and a Thumper Charge when the Siege Tower comes in.

Harvester focuses on Vesper gains and the power of the Warden Axe. It includes the skills Heavy Swing, Shatter Orb, and Field Crafting. Players with Heavy Swing can swing their axe with both hands, instantly destroying Vesper Nodes. Shatter Orbs allows players to destroy enemy soul orbs with their Throwing Axe or regular Axe Swing. Field Crafting gives players the ability to craft armor, equipment, and raid tools in the middle of the battlefield.

Treasure Hunter focuses on buffing the kinds of loot that players can find, with skills like Treasure Seeker, Archaeologist, and Artifact Mastery. Treasure Seeker allows players to find and open hidden chests at points of interest, while Archaeologist allows the selling of items to Trader Flynn. Artifact Mastery boosts the bonus magical properties of amulets when equipped.

Finally, the Protector tree focuses on boosting players’ defensive capabilities thanks to abilities like Resonant Walls, Unbreakable Armor, and Vanguard. Resonant Walls raises the durability of reinforced walls, while Unbreakable Armor prevents armor loss on death on a 2-minute cooldown. Vanguard allows allied players to spawn on you while you are defending your base.

Each skill can be unequipped at the click of a button, and resetting all spent points comes at no cost. The 44 points provided by the account levelling system will allow players to fully max out two skill trees, or spread their skill points around to their liking. XP gain has also been tuned to be incredibly fast, which will allow players to enjoy the skill tree at a quicker pace.

The update also brought with it a new Warden: Koldo. The Warden has been described as “a lost soul from long before the continent disappeared”, and makes use of his soul’s powers to protect allies. His passive ability is dubbed Guardian Angel, allowing him to automatically deploy his Tactical ability—Soul Shield—while reviving allies and protecting nearby friendly orbs from destruction. Soul Shield can also be used in the course of regular play to deploy a shield for Koldo and his allies. His ultimate ability is Battle Cry, which creates a battle standard that generates a protective dome. The standard can be picked up and dropped at will, giving more flexibility on where the dome can be placed. Standing inside the dome gives allied players faster health regeneration.

Finally, the update introduces the final weapon for Highguard—the Switchback. The weapon is a long-range double-barrel shotgun, giving players the versatility to engage in fights across multiple ranges. While typically a short-range shotgun, aiming down its sights turns it into a marksman rifle. Players can also use its twin barrels to quickly fire two bullets before needing to rechamber their next shots. The gun will be available in two gold versions through loot chests or Trader Flynn: the Basebreaker and the Repeater.

For more on Highguard, take a look at our thoughts on its launch and subsequent death.

The reasons for this will probably shock you, but here goes: Despite over two million players across all its platforms, and its team putting in the “hard work,” Wildlight has “not been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long term.” As a result, Highguard is shutting down. Servers are still available, and a new update should be live by the time you see this, which adds another new Warden, skill trees, a fresh weapon and account level progression.

“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,” said Wildlight, who thanked players for “playing, for supporting us, and for being part of Highguard‘s story.”

On the one hand, I feel bad for the developers – the artists, programmers, animators, and so on – who invested years of their lives in this project, and that includes those who were laid off shortly after launch. It’s never a good feeling when something you’ve sacrificed so much for – quality time with your loved ones, hobbies, health, and so on – ends up fizzling out.

But when I see Wildlight talk about “Highguard’s story,” I can’t help but look at the other, more cynical hand, and just ask: Who didn’t see this coming?

Forget that major companies, from EA to Riot Games, have seen their live-service titles flop. Forget that smaller studios and projects – from Knockout City to Supervive – ended up defunct. Let’s even conveniently ignore that Sony, one of the two biggest console manufacturers in the world, nearing almost 100 million PS5 consoles sold, promised a dozen live-service titles before April 2026, and in just three years – half of its console generation, for crying out loud – cancelled or shut down eight of them. Okay? Leave all that aside.

Who possibly saw Highguard at The Game Awards with its haphazard mix of ideas, and thought, “Yep, that’s going to be the next big live-service hit”? Because if you’re one of them, I have fire insurance to sell you on a house in Antarctica. I would be shocked if anyone saw it and thought it even had a chance of surviving the first year.

And it’s not simply a matter of being last at the show, upsetting those who expected to see Half-Life 3, Grand Theft Auto 6, and whatnot. From the moment Highguard was revealed, the immediate impression was how generic and uninspired it looked, despite Wildlight Entertainment’s leadership touting weeks later how it was unlike anything in the competitive shooter space.

It wisely went under the radar after this disastrous showing, though host Geoff Keighley hyping it whenever he could certainly didn’t help. When it was finally launch time, I thought that maybe the controversy would translate directly into curiosity. After all, it was a free-to-play competitive shooter with some pretty nice-looking environments. Maybe the first trailer didn’t properly showcase the gameplay loop, and there was plenty of nuance. Hence, the peak of almost 98,000 concurrent players on Steam.

However, at that point, it was all on Highguard’s gameplay to actually impress, and it sorely failed to do so. The base defense set-up phase, mounts, mining materials, looting chests (and maybe occasionally securing a supply drop), fighting over the Shieldbreaker, raiding the enemy team’s base, planting bombs on its generators (because the big match-winning stone wasn’t worth the risk) and then retreating – aside from the sheer tedium involved, that constituted one single round. And I’m not even getting into each character’s unique abilities, which failed to make up for their lack of personality, or the weapon archetypes, or the loot rarities. Like a chimera formed from Rainbow Six Siege, Fortnite, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Valorant, it felt bloated and confused, yet strangely barren.

Because beyond this needlessly complicated, drawn-out gameplay loop – which admittedly had some decent shooting and movement – Highguard just felt empty. You would think such massive maps would have PvE or unique points of interest. Something, anything to stand out. Instead, they were just that – large, lifeless sets that were seemingly left over from a brainstorming session.

Now, you could look at the “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating on Steam, and claim with some accuracy that it was the result of review-bombing from those with barely any playtime (as one developer did). However, 45 days later, it’s currently at a 46 percent “Mixed” rating. Recent reviews are also mixed, although at 62 percent.

All of this is irrelevant, however, because regardless of its rating, there weren’t enough players looking to log in, grit through all the issues and find the fun. In one day, Highguard dropped from 97,249 peak concurrent players to 39,832. Another day later, almost 20,000. In one week, 13,119. And now? It can barely crawl above 1,000.

Keep in mind that Wildlight has been releasing regular updates and trying everything. It introduced a new limited-time mode, bumping up the player count from 3v3 to 5v5 – when received well enough, it became permanent. It released a new Warden, a Wolf mount, new bases, new maps – heck, it even rebalanced the entire gameplay loop. The previous update added a mode that removed mining entirely to get players into the action faster. Alas, it was all for nought. Forget the lack of a hook – at the end of the day, Highguard didn’t have a soul.

After two weeks, Wildlight laid off the majority of its employees, retaining a “core group” to work on updates. In a little over three weeks, the official website went down, but this was due to undergoing some changes and simplification. Rumors also circulated at the same time that Highguard was not in fact self-financed but had actually received financial backing from TiMi Studio Group, which Tencent owns.

And as harsh as everything I’ve said may sound, current and former employees speaking to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier had their own grievances. First off, despite positive internal tests, the gameplay’s complexity was noted as an issue. Matches also ended up much worse without voice chat, and management reportedly refused public testing, instead aiming for a shadow drop like its previous big game.

Why? Apparently, because of “hubris,” according to former employees. If suddenly releasing a free-to-play multiplayer title while inviting streamers to preview and then stream it at launch worked in 2019, why shouldn’t it work in 2026? Even if plans changed to a trailer at The Game Awards, the alleged thought process is no less delusional.

As for those layoffs, they reportedly occurred because Tencent had pulled funding. Highguard didn’t meet its metrics, and thus, those who believed they had some “financial runway” were let go.

At the end of it all, what fresh lessons can you really derive from Highguard’s failure? It goes back to my original question: Who didn’t see this coming? We live in an age where the incumbent kings of the live-service model remain uncontested; where long-running franchises like Destiny lurch along (and where Marathon, despite the hype, is facing extensive scrutiny); and where even a developer like Valve with free-to-play hits like Dota 2 is conducting extensive, invite-only testing for Deadlock. And even if that game has more personality and fun gameplay than all the live-service failures of the past decade combined, it has an uphill battle to garner players’ attention.

But even with all that in mind, as long as there’s money on the dash, titles like Highguard will be greenlit. After all, time is a flat circle, and there’s no escape.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

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.

Over on Twitter, the development team said, “Since launch, more than two 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 12. 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 new update will be live either today or tomorrow. It adds a new Warden, weapon, skill trees and level progression for one’s account. “From all of us at Wildlight, thank you for playing, for supporting us, and for being part of Highguard‘s story.”

Highguard was announced at The Game Awards 2025, closing out the show to a less-than-ideal reaction. We later learned that Wildlight initially targeted a shadow drop for the show, but after host Geoff Keighley visited the studio, he suggested a trailer showcase spot. Following the backlash, the team kept a low profile, only re-emerging for the game’s launch on January 26th.

Despite nearly 98,000 peak concurrent players on Steam at launch, it received an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating due to performance issues and design choices. While this has since become “Mixed,” the player base quickly evaporated. In the past week alone, Highguard struggled to cross 1,000 concurrent players on the platform.

While initially touted as self-financed, Highguard was later alleged to have been funded by Tencent’s TiMi Studio Group. After reportedly failing to meet targets, the latter seemingly pulled funding, which led to layoffs at Wildlight. Development was reportedly positive, but some former employees would cite the “hubris” of leadership – including apparently skipping external playtests – for the game’s failings.

Alex Graner, who worked as a senior level designer at Wildlight, offered his own take on where concerns began via the Quad Damage podcast (transcription via PCGamesN). Amid it “constantly evolv[ing],” his “biggest fear” was the decision to “go full-in on 3v3″ – effectively catering to more hardcore PvPers.

“I can only speak to my side of it as a level designer, but when I joined [Wildlight], it was trying to figure out this new, ambitious game, and this team is always pushing the boundaries. You don’t strive to create something that doesn’t work out, but it happens, unfortunately. Throughout development, we really leaned into the competitive side of it, and that was always one of my biggest fears as a player.

“3v3 is always the sweatiest version of anything like battle royale, objective modes, wingman, you know it, you name it. It requires such a high intensity of communication with your team and team play that it doesn’t leave much room for casualness. I think that was the biggest thing that turned a lot of players off Highguard.”

The sheer complexity of the gameplay loop didn’t help, especially compared to Apex Legends, which was “really easy to understand after you played one game.” The fact that it launched when battle royale titles were still “kind of an up-and-coming mode” didn’t hurt.

“Highguard has all these different rules and stages, it’s like, ‘Oh, you want to loot, now we’ve got to chase this objective, now we have to plant this objective, now it’s overtime… It has all these rules, which I think work at a really high level, but when players are first coming in, it’s a lot to grasp.

“On top of all that, because it was 3v3, that kind of game just requires high-skill movement and shooting, which is already a pretty high [bar to] entry as well. So if you just have a few bad games or your teammates aren’t sticking together, you’re just going to get rolled, and it’s very hard to 1v2 in our game.

“At the end of the day, the focus on teamwork ended up contributing to Highguard’s undoing. “It’s all designed to be a team-based shooter. I think that was the biggest thing. People just kind of turned it off because they didn’t have the team,” said Graner.

Wildlight continues to deliver content as outlined on its roadmap – it even added a new mode that completely removes the mining phase, thus streamlining matches further. However, with only 541 peak concurrent players in the past 24 hours – a massive fall from nearly 98,000 – on Steam, you have to wonder how much longer it can keep going.

The extensive testing Wildlight Entertainment went through in the final year of Highguard‘s development resulted in positive reactions. However, many blind spots were noted, such as the overall complexity of the general gameplay structure, as well as the fact that communication through voice chat was key for the testers’ enjoyment. Tests without voice chat ended up being a worse experience, according to former employees of the studio. Along with this, the game’s complexity was never addressed since the testers had access to developers that could answer any questions about gameplay mechanics.

When the idea of getting a larger amount of feedback through a public test release came up, Wildlight’s leadership apparently refused. Despite many other games, including recent releases like Battlefield 6 and ARC Raiders seeing success through external testing, the studio was adamant on going with a stealthier launch for Highguard in the vein of Apex Legends.

Despite these issues, however, the environment at Wildlight Entertainment was still described as “a healthy, collaborative, transparent” one, with employees noting that they loved working there until the last two months. Morale would eventually start sinking as the studio got closer to its The Game Awards unveiling.

As for the original plans for Highguard if the game were to be successful, the developers seemingly wanted to recreate the fate of the Titanfall franchise. While the first entry in the shooter was multiplayer-only, the critically-acclaimed second one would expand on its universe in interesting ways thanks to its beloved single-player campaign. However, considering the current state of the game, we are unlikely to see these plans come to fruition.

The title was also undoubtedly harmed by its debut trailer at The Game Awards 2025 in December, closing out the show with a trailer. While the trailer, coming about thanks to TGA host Geoff Keighley finding the project interesting, raised many questions, Wildlight Entertainment went radio silent until the game’s eventual January 26th release. In fact, even employees at the studio were encouraged to avoid social media thanks to the general rise in negativity surrounding the announcement.

The same report has also revealed that, following the lay-offs at Wildlight Entertainment, only 20 developers now remain to work on the game. According to a former employee, the studio was originally made up of 100 people, and there was apparently enough “financial runway” to offer post-launch support for Highguard. However, studio leadership revealed in a meeting on February 11th that Wildlight was “out of money”.

A report from earlier this month has also indicated that, despite proclaiming itself to be completely independent, Wildlight Entertainment was getting financial backing from Tencent’s TiMi Studio Group. Described as “the undisclosed lead financial backer,” TiMi apparently didn’t have much say in the creative aspects of Highguard‘s development. The studio’s employees also didn’t seem to be aware of this funding, with the report noting that it was “one of several mysteries swirling around the studio”.

Highguard is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S for free.

Wildlight announced layoffs shortly after its release, even though a core team remains in place to deliver content. Interestingly, a new report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, who spoke to former staff, indicated that the studio, which consisted of 100 people, had enough “financial runway.” However, in an alleged meeting on February 11th, leadership revealed that they were “out of money.”

Apparently, Tencent, which was alleged to have been secretly funding the title, pulled funding because metrics like retention rate weren’t met (even if management didn’t explicitly phrase it as such). There are reportedly fewer than 20 developers remaining on the title, with those who left citing “hubris” at how leadership handled the title. It’s not completely unexpected, given that these were the folks who delivered Apex Legends, but times have certainly changed.

Wildlight continues to issue updates for Highguard, following its roadmap to a T. It hasn’t abruptly wrapped things up, like Anthem, but thus far, things aren’t looking good in terms of player counts. For more details, check out our review of the base game.

“Not sure on the timeframe, but basically needs to be transferred and simplified,” said a developer on the game’s official Discord. “Low priority at the moment (reputational damage already done). Now we just need to focus on delivering updates and content to improve.”

Of course, it’s worth remembering that Wildlight Entertainment suffered extensive lay-offs shortly after Highguard’s release. A “core group” remains to continue development, and there’s no word on whether the current roadmap, which promises new content all the way up to December, will change. Time will tell, as always, but given the current player count, at least on Steam, it’s looking more dire every day.

Released on January 26th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, Highguard first shot to infamy for its announcement at The Game Awards 2025. Outside of criticism for its generic-looking gameplay and genre, much of the backlash stemmed from it going on last (which was a big change from the original plan to shadow-drop it).

You can check out our review for more details, but Wildlight has been quick with the improvements and new content. It released a limited-time 5v5 mode and made it permanent after a favorable response. Episode 2 also went live earlier this month, adding a new Warden, map, story cinematic and mount type. Stay tuned for updates and in the meantime, head here to learn more about how TiMi Studio Group, owned by Tencent, was allegedly funding the project.

The funding seemingly came from the TiMi Studio Group, and was noted as being “the undisclosed lead financial backer” for the studio. Interestingly workers at the studio also seemed to be unaware of this money coming in, with the report noting that it was “one of several mysteries swirling around the studio”. The financial support didn’t involve any stakes in Wildlight Entertainment itself, however, with the report also stating that the studio is “technically independent and not part of TiMi.”

The studio was hit by lay-offs earlier this month owing to the negativity surrounding the PvP raid shooter. While the exact number of employees affected wasn’t revealed, the studio said in a statement that it is maintaining a small team that will continue the game’s development.

“Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game,” wrote the developer. “We’re proud of the team, talent, and the product we’ve created together. We’re also grateful for players who gave the game a shot, and those who continue to be a part of our community.”

One former developer—technical artist and rigger Josh Sobel—wrote a lengthy post discussing the title’s unveiling, launch, and the negativity surrounding it. Sobel also referred to Wildlight Entertainment as being “our independent, self-published, dev-led studio,” which indicates that, despite its financial investments, Tencent’s TiMi Studio Group didn’t seem to have any creative control over the development of Highguard.

Things have been looking more dire for Highguard. Despite it having hit a peak of almost 100,000 concurrent players on PC (via SteamDB) at its launch, it has since struggled to hang on to even a tenth of its player base. At the time of publishing, the PvP raid shooter saw a 24-hour peak of 1,507 players, and over the previous week, has been struggling to hit the 3,000 mark.

The future of Highguard has also been recently called into question, since the website has been unavailable all day. The studio itself hasn’t made any comment about its website being down, with its last social media post being the announcement of lay-offs from February 12th. The game’s social media account hasn’t done much since that day after having published patch notes either.

Highguard was launched on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in January after having previously been revealed through a show-closing trailer at The Game Awards 2025. The unveiling was quite controversial, with even studio co-founder Chad Grenier referring to it as having been “maybe a little risky” in hindsight. Since then, however, Wildlight has continued to release updates for the game, including a major Episode 2 patch earlier this month.