Free-to-play shooter Highguard launched last night (January 26) but is struggling to live up to the hype.
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Highguard is the first game from Wildlight Entertainment, a new studio made up of developers who worked on Titanfall, Call Of Duty and Apex Legends.
The game’s reveal trailer was the final announcement at The Game Awards 2025, a spot which is usually reserved for the biggest of titles. Because of this, fans were expecting big things from the free-to-play shooter but after that reveal, developers went quiet with some speculating Highguard would be delayed.
However Highguard did launch yesterday, with more than 97,000 gaming fans playing at once (according to SteamDB). That number quickly dropped off though and right now, just 13,000 people are playing. The game’s currently got a “mostly negative” review score as well.
“The game isn’t fun and it isn’t interesting. I mostly just feel bad for the devs. The game clearly wasn’t designed or prepared for this level of scrutiny,” wrote one player. “This game needs serious work in order to be what it was hyped up to be,” said another. I was cautiously optimistic for Highguard, I didn’t want to assume anything of the game ahead of launch. With that in mind, I am disappointed with what I’ve played. Above all the game is boring,” added a third.
Highguard pic.twitter.com/6IExszq3Ff
— Bartłomiej Sieja (@BartSieja) January 27, 2026
However others are enjoying Highguard. “I logged into the game to roast it like the rest of you probably did. However, I gotta say that the game is actually extremely fun,” wrote one player. “It’s fun and doesn’t deserve the hate,” added another.
“Honestly, we don’t need [player counts] to be super huge in order to be successful,” lead designer Mohammad Alavi said during a press conference [via PC Gamer]. “We’re a small team. A six-player match is not hard to find. What we’re really hoping for is a core group of fans that love us. That will allow us to grow. Being the ire of the internet hate machine sucks, but at the same time, I try to just focus on making the best game I can and getting that game into people’s hands. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.”
Speaking to PC Gamer about The Game Award backlash, Wildlight Entertainment CEO and founder Dusty Welch said: “Look, I wish Highguard had been received better. I wish the feedback had been better. I think, ultimately, we could have made a different trailer. We could have made something that did a better job of highlighting the unique loop of the game. So that’s on us. We take that, but the team is resilient.”
He went on to say The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley offered them the prestigious final slot of the night because he was a fan of the game.
In other news Ashley Burch, the voice actor of Chloe in the original Life Is Strange, hasn’t been invited back for Reunion.
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