- Primary Subject: Highguard
- Key Update: PlayHighguard.com has gone offline following layoffs at Wildlight Entertainment.
- Status: Unresolved / No official shutdown confirmed
- Last Verified: February 18, 2026
- Quick Answer: Highguard’s website going dark, combined with severe player decline and layoffs, has intensified shutdown speculation — though no closure has been formally announced.
Highguard’s ongoing collapse has escalated, with PlayHighguard.com suddenly going dark following significant staff cuts at Wildlight Entertainment.
Instead of its usual homepage outlining modes, characters, and updates, visitors are now greeted by a plain “Site Unavailable” notice, a minimal support contact, and little else.
For most games, that might signal a routine technical hiccup. For a struggling live-service shooter barely weeks into its lifespan, it feels like something much bigger.
Why Now, of All Times?
The worry goes beyond a simple website outage and centers on the timing, considering Highguard launched on January 26 after its prominent reveal at The Game Awards 2025.
Expectations were high, but initial reactions were mixed to negative. Many viewers questioned whether the market needed yet another online-only hero-style shooter in an ecosystem already dominated by entrenched live-service giants. Despite skepticism, launch metrics initially looked solid.
The game peaked at roughly 97,000 concurrent players on Steam and reportedly saw more than a million players try it during its debut window.
On the surface, that suggests curiosity and interest. But free-to-play titles live and die by retention, not day-one downloads.
Within weeks, the player count collapsed dramatically — dropping by nearly 99% in some reported figures.
Weekly peaks fell into the low thousands, and daily concurrency reportedly hovered even lower. In a genre built around long-term engagement and cosmetic monetization, that kind of drop is catastrophic.
Did the Developers Attempt a Comeback?
Wildlight moved fast to course-correct, pushing out balance patches while also launching a new 5v5 mode to tackle concerns about pacing and match flow.
However, players insisted the game’s struggles weren’t just surface-level, as online discussions repeatedly called out disjointed gameplay flow, bloated systems, and the absence of proper public playtests.
Comparisons to Apex Legends were frequent, particularly because some team members had past experience with major FPS franchises.
Critics argued the comparison wasn’t fair, noting that Apex had rigorous private testing, strategic influencer involvement, significant publisher funding, and entered the genre before it became overcrowded.
Highguard, by contrast, attempted a high-visibility reveal and rapid release without comparable infrastructure, marketing runway, or large-scale playtesting. In a multiplayer space this competitive, that approach can quickly become a liability.
How Did the Layoffs Impact Confidence?
Shortly after launch, Wildlight announced significant layoffs, reducing its team to a small core group responsible for ongoing development and support.
Sources said team morale was rattled, and those still at the studio described the cuts as a heavy blow. The company promised to press on, but belief in the project had already weakened.
The site going down added to the unease, particularly when a Discord link redirected to an unrelated server before being corrected, reinforcing fears that something wasn’t running smoothly behind the scenes.
Meanwhile, after posting patch notes, the game’s official social media accounts fell silent and offered no explanation about the website’s status, just as reports emerged that Tencent’s TiMi Studio Group had quietly backed Highguard financially.
While Wildlight was described as technically independent and creatively self-directed, the revelation suggested that external funding played a role behind the scenes.
That backing, however, did not prevent layoffs or stabilize the project’s trajectory. As investors push for rapid profits, a strong initial drop can quickly shrink a game’s shelf life.
Is Highguard Following a Familiar Live-Service Pattern?
Industry watchers are now placing Highguard in the same category as other recent live-service flops, as the cycle has become predictable: big multiplayer ambitions, aggressive marketing, strong launch numbers, steep player drop-off, layoffs, and growing shutdown speculation.
The problem is not just quality, it is market reality, since new online games are competing for time as much as sales.
Players already committed to long-running ecosystems rarely abandon them unless a newcomer offers something truly exceptional. “
Good enough” isn’t sufficient anymore, especially when players are questioning the game’s long-term stability since Highguard depends entirely on cosmetic sales for revenue.
If the game were to shut down, players would naturally wonder about the fate of their digital items and whether refunds would be offered.
While no closure has been officially announced, history shows that disappearing web infrastructure often precedes larger announcements.
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