ALBAWABA - Only weeks after its release, Highguard has allegedly lost most of its staff members after the game failed to reach a respectable playerbase.
Level designer Alex Graner posted on LinkedIn that he was laid off, along with most of the team at Wildlight Entertainment. He added, "This one really stings as there was a lot of unreleased content I was really looking forward to that I and others designed for Highguard."
The free-to-play shooter first launched with a respectable 97,000 all-time peak on Steam. However, the player count massively dropped the next day, losing 90 percent of its audience. According to SteamDB, Highguard currently has only 1,895 players right now, with a 3,580 24-hour peak.
Highguard team faces mass layoffs, designer says
Unlike single-player titles, losing this many players weeks after release is not a good sign for a free-to-play hero shooter that depends on its playerbase for revenue.
Before it dropped on Steam, Highguard received little to no marketing, except from Geoff Keighley, who many claim did more harm than good by giving it the final slot at the Game Awards event.
Keighley was one of the only video game journalists heavily promoting the game on X (formerly Twitter), while posting memes about how he will "accept everyone's apologies" when Highguard releases.
After its announcement at the Game Awards, Highguard's marketing team went silent and only started sharing gameplay videos on the game's weapon types, modes, maps, and heroes a day before its release.
A Steam user previously wrote in the reviews section, "I blame Geoff for the dog pile this game is currently getting. It’s fun. Is it something I’m going to continue playing? Probably not, but I might get a few more hours of fun out of it. Plus it’s free."
Many other players expressed their fatigue with the hero shooter genre, stating further that they aren't willing to give Highguard a chance because it was released into an already saturated market.
