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In the wake of its shooter's negative reception, Highguard developer Wildlight Entertainment has suffered mass layoffs and announced the game would be permanently shutting down – a decision that has come as a result of various factors.
Design director Jason McCord dives into the Highguard shutdown in a new LinkedIn post – one that's come after director and studio head Chad Grenier's own thread, in which he said there wasn't "enough revenue to keep anyone employed" in the end.
"The post that no developer ever wants to make," writes McCord, announcing the game's end date next week. "We are shutting down our game on March 12th, after only seven weeks."
He continues: "We swung for the fences in a saturated market and made something genuinely new that we loved to play. Regardless of how it turned out, I'm proud that we tried to bring something original to the table in the shooter space."
The design director goes on to state that memories of "creating a game from scratch and playtesting it over the years will always overshadow the difficulties" Wildlight faced following Highguard's initial announcement.
"For the people who enjoyed Highguard – I can't express how much it meant to us that you showed up. There weren't a lot of you, but you meant everything to us, and it kept us motivated."
This lines up well with what Grenier said himself. The game performed well (a performance comparable to Apex Legends' own, apparently), but it didn't stick. As for what's been happening behind the scenes, McCord says remaining devs have been hard at work.
"The few remaining developers on the skeleton crew at Wildlight have been showing up, working tirelessly on creating new features and finishing up some that were partially complete."
He goes over the "meaningful updates" they shipped, like when they added 5v5, Ranked, and Raid Rush to the shooter, explaining that the studio was trying to focus on keeping the Highguard players that it already had.
"We were trying to turn the ship around by focusing on retention, and showing the small but passionate community that we would show up strong as long as we could – and hopefully they would too. It was impressive from a dev perspective, if not actually sustainable for us in the long term."
When it comes to the game's failure, however, McCord says that there are all sorts of theories floating about… but they're not all correct.
"Everyone has their thoughts on why the game failed to find an audience. Many theories are partially true, and many are way off the mark," he describes. "I have my insights, and everyone who worked on it will be thinking about it for years to come. I pity anyone who grabs a beer with me in the next six months, as this is all you will hear about."
Regardless, though, McCord states he's taken many lessons from the game to heart.
"Either way," as he puts it, "I learned more from releasing Highguard than from seven previously successful shooter games. Those learnings will help me, and any team I'm on in the future, so if nothing else, I value that greatly."
The lead ends his post with a heartfelt conclusion: "At the end of this four-year journey, I'm immensely proud of the team and of the game. We may not have had many players, but I was one of them."
It's a sad situation all around. Grenier has left another comment on it all, too, replying to a fan discussing how Highguard released in a "skeleton state" at first. "When you're out of time and money – you have to release a game with the runway you have available and hope players will stick with you post-launch," he writes.
I suppose it makes sense, as unfortunate as it is. It's brutal out here, folks, and Highguard is one of many on this boat… not few.
