Highguard is permanently shutting down on March 12. Developers Wildlight Entertainment made the announcement on Twitter and thanked players for playing the free competitive shooter that launched back in January.
On March 3, Wildlight Entertainment posted a blog, “Highguard’s final update arriving soon. Thank you for playing with us.” In the blog post, the remaining devs working on the doomed FPS promised that one last update was coming. But then, after that, Highguard would be shut down for good on March 12.
“Today we’re sharing difficult news,” said the studio. “We have made the decision to permanently shut down Highguard on March 12. 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.”
In the blog post announcing the game’s demise, the devs explained that “despite the passion and hard work” of those who worked on Highguard, the game was unable to build a “sustainable player base to support [it] long term.”
Wildlight says there will be one final game update that will go live “tonight or tomorrow” that will add a new playable Warden, a new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees.
“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,” said Wildlight.
How Highguard went from Game Awards finale to live-service flop
Highguard has had a rough few months. Developed by some former Titanfall and Apex Legends devs, Highguard was revealed as the big finale at the 2025 Game Awards in December. The game’s generic art style and multiplayer focus didn’t go over well with fans online, who almost immediately turned on the free-to-play 3v3 shooter. In the weeks that followed, the studio behind the game went radio silent, and the discourse around Highguard went from toxic to super-duper toxic quickly. Later reporting would confirm that the plan had originally been to do a shadow drop in January, like the one Apex Legends had received, but the studio couldn’t say no to a free slot at Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards.
Shortly after the game launched on January 26 on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, Wildlight Entertainment began making big changes to appease fans and keep people playing, including adding a 5v5 mode. It also launched a mode recently that removed looting and focused on raiding enemy bases, a highlight of the game. But it never worked, and the game never got close to matching its launch day player count of 97,000 concurrent users again, according to SteamDB.
Layoffs happened not long after launch as Highguard’s playercount on SteamDB cratered. Now, Highguard will join other live-service flops like Concord in that big digital graveyard in the sky later this month when the servers are flipped off completely. At least Highguard can say it lasted 45 days, 31 days longer than Concord’s 14-day lifespan.
“From all of us at Wildlight, thank you for playing, for supporting us, and for being part of Highguard’s story,” posted the studio on Twitter.
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