Highguard: A Disappointing Launch Amidst Mixed Reviews and Future Support Plans

The game Highguard has been released—a free-to-play team-based raid shooter developed by Wildlight Entertainment, a studio founded by former employees of Respawn Entertainment. The game was revealed during the closing announcements of The Game Awards 2025 but then disappeared from the public eye until its launch. Nonetheless, the buzz was enough to draw in a crowd of gamers, many of whom ultimately felt let down.

Why did Wildlight Entertainment choose not to invest in marketing beyond their TGA appearance? According to the studio’s vice president of product and publishing Jason Torfin, Highguard was originally intended to be released as a stealth drop without any prior announcements.

Torfin stated that the independence of Wildlight and their cautious business approach give the team a genuine freedom to innovate. The developers do not prioritize commercial success above all else, believing that a blind chase for it leads to failure in nine out of ten cases. Consequently, they planned to launch Highguard quietly, allowing the game to “speak for itself.”

However, the team changed their course after an offer from producer and host of TGA Geoff Keighley, who was so impressed with the game that he wanted to announce it at his event.

Jason Torfin

Access to Highguard became available to everyone on the evening of January 26. Within an hour of its launch, the peak player count on Steam almost reached 100,000 concurrent players, but soon began to decline. There could be several reasons for this.

Reviews indicate that Highguard suffers from poor optimization and frequent bugs, leaving players with login issues. Additionally, after a few matches, some users feel that the maps are too large for a “3v3” format and express confusion regarding the target audience of the game. “Even the beta of ‘Concord’ launched and performed better than this [censored],” shared player Borkup54. The game’s responsive controls for mounts are one aspect that is frequently praised.

As of this writing, out of 19,000 reviews of Highguard on Steam, only 31% are positive (with an average score of 3.11/5 on PS Store and 2.9/5 in the Xbox store). Players describe the shooter as boring, complain about subpar performance, blurry visuals, a strange gameplay structure, and more. “The game proudly calls itself a ‘next-gen shooter,’ but in reality, it’s just a bland mishmash of borrowings from other well-known titles,” concluded user Swervey ‘Ascoobis’ Doo.

In response, Wildlight thanked all gamers who showed interest in Highguard and promised to release an update soon to address stability issues. Several patches will follow within the week.

Highguard has also started its “first episode,” which is how the seasons are referred to in-game. Players have access to:

Long-term plans for the game are already being teased. The second episode is set to begin in two weeks, with each following episode lasting two months. However, content updates for Highguard will be released monthly.

Among the planned additions are new maps, bases, mounts, weapons, lootable items, and more. The roster of playable characters will expand every few months. A ranked mode is set to launch in February, while new game modes are scheduled for April, June, August, October, and December.

Additionally, Wildlight has promised not to inundate players with advertisements or crossover skins. “We wanted to create a store that we ourselves would like as gamers. So here, it’s only ‘cosmetics’ and direct payments. No fear of missing out, no pay-to-win mechanics, no random loot boxes or paid advantages,” assured Jason Torfin.

On paper, this plan looks solid. But only time will tell if the title can maintain enough of an online presence to realize all these ambitions. The developers assert that metrics like concurrent player counts on Steam should not dictate the success of Highguard.

Mohammad Alavi, lead designer

You can play Highguard on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series. There is currently no Russian language support. Note that the title operates on a free-to-play model.