Highguard Is No More As Of Next Thursday

Are you sitting down? This will come as a complete shock, but Wildlight Entertainment’s big fat AAA free-to-play competitive FPS Highguard is going to be shut down in a little over a week, on March 12. Who could have seen it coming? Okay, I just broke Dr. Frink’s Sarcasm Detector, I better stop. For now.

“Today we’re sharing difficult news. We have made the decision to permanently shut down Highguard on March 12,” Wildlight posted on social media around 1 PM Pacific, trying to do a positive spin on it. “Since launch, more than 2 million players stepped into Highguard’s world. You shared feedback, created content, and many believed in what we were building. For that, we are deeply grateful. 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. 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.”

Wildlight went on to say the game would receive one final update, adding a new Warden, a new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees. The patch will go up tomorrow and that will be all she wrote. It’s a very polished public statement, but when they’re not being polite, members of Wildlight tend to blame everyone but themselves. Developer Josh Sobel infamously bad-mouthed the gaming public for “turn[ing] it into a joke from minute one.” The reality is, despite an enthusiastic endorsement from Geoff Keighley, Highguard never really had a chance.

This game is the latest failure in a string of incredibly expensive live service titles attempting to steal the thunder from established franchises. Trying to slay the dragons of Fortnite, Roblox or Minecraft is all but impossible, especially with a lackluster Overwatch copycat that brings nothing new to the table. But the thought of a “forever game” that can be endlessly milked has been so enticing that publishers have been willing to make these incredibly risky bets with infinitesimal chance of reward and high chance of failure…not unlike playing the lottery, but with the industry itself.

They say the AAA industry will collapse under the weight of failed live-service games and…well, it’s overdue. Big bloated greedy companies like EA and Ubisoft are a plague on this business and we don’t need them. Nintendo broadcast another Indie Direct this morning displaying tons of promising titles from around the world. Plenty of people make games…simply for the love of making games, and it’s THEM who need our support, not the Highguards and Concords of the world.