Just six weeks after release: "Highguard" is being shut down

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Four years of development time for a game that is only playable for six weeks: The fate of the failed online shooter “Highguard” is sealed. It will be shut down on March 12, the developers announced in a post on X. Since its release on January 26, “Highguard” will therefore only have been playable for 45 days.

Since it is a free-to-play title, a general purchase price refund is not applicable. However, in-game items were sold in “Highguard” via microtransactions; how developer Wildlight will handle this and whether affected players will get their money back for them is open.

All or nothing

“Highguard” was an online shooter with live-service elements; this refers to online games that are regularly supplied with new content and can generate long-term revenue if they reach a large enough player base. If they don't, they quickly face a pile of rubble.

The monetization model of live-service games is designed for the long-term sale of in-game items. If players stay away, the remaining fans can no longer find multiplayer matches, stop spending money, and eventually leave the game. Meanwhile, developers incur ongoing costs for server operation and further development. It is a downward spiral that Wildlight Entertainment is preempting with the complete shutdown of “Highguard.”

Live-service games like “Highguard” are always bets on big success but also carry a big risk – they are “boom or bust,” all or nothing. Titles like “Fortnite,” “League of Legends,” and “Counter-Strike” have dominated gamers' playtime for years and generate huge revenues. Failed competitors, like “Highguard,” quickly end up on the pyre.

This is what happened to Amazon's online shooter “Crucible,” which only lasted a few months. The online shooter “Concord” even only managed two weeks before publisher Sony pulled the plug, shut down the servers, and closed the development studio Firewalk. The case of “Highguard” is therefore tragic for the developers, but not unusual in the industry.

Controversy over Game Awards trailer

“Highguard” even started with good numbers: According to the unofficial Steam tracker SteamDB, almost 100,000 players simultaneously tried the free-to-play title at peak times at launch on January 26 – partly because the game was presented with a trailer at the Game Awards. In fact, this trailer was broadcast as the last announcement of the show – a slot for which players have particularly high expectations. After the announcement of a rather generic-looking live-service game, disappointment prevailed among many viewers, and many took out their frustration on “Highguard.” The developers have repeatedly regretted the situation in interviews.

However, the SteamDB numbers show that “Highguard” at least generated attention with the controversial Game Awards trailer. 100,000 simultaneous players on launch day is a good number to build on. According to the developers, the game even reached a total of 2 million people.

But “Highguard” failed to gain momentum from this: User reviews on Steam were quite negative, and player numbers plummeted rapidly. Recently, only a few hundred people were playing “Highguard” simultaneously per day.

A patch is still coming

“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,” the developers write on X. How the studio will continue is unclear. From previous cases, it is known that game companies usually do not survive such a flop.

Wildlight still plans to release a patch by March 12, which will include a new weapon and skill trees, among other things – a short-lived glimpse of what the developers had planned for the coming months and years.

(dahe)