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As Highguard studio Wildlight Entertainment suffers a permanent shutdown and mass layoffs in the wake of the game's negative reception, director and studio head Chad Grenier explains a bit of what developers saw of the shooter's performance behind the scenes.
Speaking in response to Wildlight's announcement that the team has "made the decision to permanently shut down Highguard on March 12," Grenier, who also worked as director on 2019 battle royale hero shooter Apex Legends, writes, "With today's sad news for the game and studio, I thought I would share some interesting information about Highguard in the thread below."
Following his post is some seriously interesting insight.
We had slightly over 2 million players worldwide try the game. I would like to thank all of you for giving the game a try. Given all of the backlash between announce and launch day, trying the game for yourself is all I could have asked for. Thank you to our players.March 3, 2026
"We had slightly over two million players worldwide try the game," describes Grenier. "I would like to thank all of you for giving the game a try. Given all of the backlash between announce and launch day, trying the game for yourself is all I could have asked for. Thank you to our players."
He then says the "average session duration was 91 minutes" – not a bad number at all. "This is actually quite good!"
Grenier explains why: "This means that on average, a player logged into Highguard and played for 91 minutes. The average games played per session was 3.48 matches per session."
As for who was playing Highguard most, a handy chart from the director shows that, "Most recently, PS5 was [the] biggest playerbase by 2x, then Xbox, then Steam." He includes some fun statistics, too, like the most-picked character – Scarlet (who was originally "Skye").
"Most games were ended via a generator exploding," continues Grenier. "Second was an anchor stone plant. The Vanguard had the most kills." When it comes to which country's nationals populated Highguard the most, the lead says, unsurprisingly, it's the US. Perhaps more interesting, though, is the region in second place.
"US was by far our largest audience! But huge shout out to Japan for being our second largest playerbase!"
Not enough revenue to keep anyone employed to work on it, unfortunately.March 3, 2026
The dev also reveals that "92% of people who loaded the game for the first time, completed the training mission." Again, not bad at all – in fact, it's comparable to Apex Legends, according to Grenier. "This is actually a very healthy number, similar to what we saw at launch with Apex training completion."
He concludes with a chart on the most beloved game mode, which proved to be 3v3 – even after Wildlight added 5v5 and Raid Rush to the shooter.
Ultimately, however, there just wasn't enough money coming in to keep the studio going. As Grenier puts it, "Not enough revenue to keep anyone employed to work on it, unfortunately." It's certainly a sad conclusion for the relatively new title.
