Wildlight's Highguard Shuts Down After 45 Days, Servers Close March 12

Wildlight Entertainment said it will permanently shut down Highguard and take the game's servers offline on March 12. In a post on X, the studio wrote, "Today we're sharing difficult news. We have made the decision to permanently shut down Highguard on March 12," and added, "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 closure comes after a January 26 launch that briefly drew a large crowd and then collapsed. Wccftech reported a launch peak of roughly 97,000 concurrent players on Steam, while Polygon noted that in the days before the shutdown the game was peaking at less than 500 concurrent players on Steam. Wildlight, quoted by 80 Lv, told players that "Since launch, more than 2 million players stepped into Highguard’s world," and thanked the community for feedback and content.

Highguard was billed as a free-to-play raid shooter with PvP elements and named playable characters called Wardens. The studio behind it, Wildlight Entertainment, was founded by developers who previously worked on Apex Legends and Call of Duty. Kotaku and 80 Lv trace the game's first public reveal to a Game Awards trailer in December, followed almost immediately by a beta that some outlets say may have limited the time available for broader testing.

Wildlight pushed several rapid changes after launch. Polygon reported the developer added a 5v5 mode within days to address complaints that matches lacked action and later made that mode permanent. Subsequent updates introduced new Wardens and match-flow tweaks, and a February update added another 5v5 variant that removed the preparation and looting phases from matches.

Wccftech reported internal fallout in the weeks after release, saying the majority of the studio's development team was laid off roughly two weeks after launch. Wccftech framed the collapse as tied to Highguard's free-to-play business model and reported that "As a free-to-play game that relied on microtransactions to sustain itself, once Highguard missed certain launch goals that could have kept its funding from Tencent coming, without a huge influx of players paying for the game's battle pass and character skins, it ran out of money to keep the studio afloat almost immediately."

Despite the shutdown, Wildlight promised a final content drop before servers go dark. Polygon, Wccftech, and 80 Lv reported the update will include "a new Warden, a new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees." Wccftech and 80 Lv suggested the patch could arrive very soon, with Wccftech saying it was expected "tomorrow if it doesn't hit the wire later tonight" and 80 Lv reporting it "goes live tomorrow." Wildlight invited players to return for a last run, writing, "Servers will remain online until 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."

Critical response was mixed during Highguard's short life. Polygon reviewer Ford James summed up one recurring critique, calling the game's biggest problem "too many ideas." Kotaku placed Highguard in a broader pattern of rapid live-service failures, noting it lasted only 31 days longer than Concord. With servers scheduled to close March 12, Highguard's post-launch sprint of updates, layoffs, and a promised final patch mark the end of a live-service experiment that lasted 45 days from launch to shutdown.