Highguard is following the path of so many other ill-fated live service games and will be shutting down its servers next week on Thursday, March 12. Following a Game Awards ending announcement that left it lambasted up to and past its January 26 launch date, things just never seemed able to get going for the project made by the former Titanfall and Apex Legends developers at Wildlight Entertainment.
Highguard Shutting Down Servers a Month After Launch
While Highguard slightly outlasted the short run time for the most notorious live service failure in Concord, this obviously does not have great optics for a gaming industry that is constantly being hit with layoffs, closures, and just an overpiling of bad news.
While the road for the game is set to meet its end very soon, there will be one more update released either tonight or tomorrow that will include one more playable character and a weapon added to the game’s questionable loot pool system. Account level progression and a skill tree are also being rushed in before it’s all closed down in a week.
Following the recent layoffs that Wildlight Entertainment underwent, things do not look great for the future of this independent studio. There are reports that Tencent helped fund Highguard, but other than that, it doesn’t seem that the studio has anything to stand on at the moment unless it has a pitch for a new game that has been picked up from an outside publisher.
There are a million reasons people will bring up for why Highguard failed. Some will say the spotlight and praise from Geoff Keighley at The Game Awards doomed it from the start. Others might criticize the zero communication leading up to launch. At its core, Highguard was not a bad game, but it also wasn’t special enough to keep people constantly playing like every live service title needs. With multiple instances of this kind of game shutting down so soon after launch in recent years, it’s time for developers and publishers to change their strategies.
