When the website of Highguard suddenly began blaring that it was "unavailable" not long after news broke of layoffs at developer Wildlight, you could have been forgiven for thinking a Concord-style pulling offline might be in the shooter's near future. That doesn't look to be the case, though, with the studio having just announced a couple of new additions set to arrive in the game this week.
Highguard is in a bit of a Schrödinger's cat situation. That's because at the time of writing, the official site only shows the shooter's logo, and text that reads "This site is currently unavailable. Please contact support@codethirtytwo.com for assistance," alongside links to its official Discord server and Dwitter page. This, of course, could just be a blip, but even as I'm writing this it's been the case for several hours, and there's not a single word from developer Wildlight about why it's down. So, it is both dead and not dead until someone opens the box.
Wildlight, the studio behind recently released shooter Highguard, have confirmed that they've "parted ways" with an unspecified number of staff. This confirmation follows a former Wildlight level designer affected by the cuts claiming in a LinkedIn post that "most of the team" at the studio have been laid off.
Highguard's problems are well documented. After its reveal at The Game Awards as the final game, it was heavily slated online, with players calling it yet another generic hero shooter. The game launched, its player count sank, and a significant portion of its developers were sadly laid off. One such developer suggested the game was "turned into a joke from minute one."
Floundering PvP shooter Highguard lives on, as developer Wildlight releases a new content update and assures worried fans that ominous signs like the game's website going offline are "low priority" problems.
A new report has revealed that Wildlight Entertainment, the studio behind ill-fated first person shooter Highguard, was funded by Tencent studio group TiMi. The full scope of this funding, its connection if any to recent layoffs, and the reason for its secrecy remains unclear.
A former Wildlight developer has shared their thoughts on Highguard's release after its announcement at The Game Awards last year, stating due to "false assumptions" around its debut trailer, "we were turned into a joke".
A recap: of the seven hopefuls I slipped into our bulk 2025 list of "Oh, that looks alright" games, only three actually released in 2025, and one of them wasn’t very good. If it’s the hope that kills you, I am therefore dead four, arguably five times over. Real Necron shit, honestly.
