Key Highlights:
- Highguard has laid off a large portion of its staff.
- The news comes via an official X post from Wildlight Entertainment.
- The game’s unfortunate release window and pre launch infamy might have had something to do with this.
Highguard recently laid off most of its staff, as claimed by a rather ominous LinkedIn post. The live service fantasy arena shooter was blasted with scathing reviews from players mere minutes after its launch, and has managed to lose out the entirety of its playerbase in a short few moments.
It’s a genuinely saddening thing to witness, and one that could have perhaps been avoided (at least to this degree of infamy).
Highguard’s Wildlight Entertainment Has Announced A Series of Layoffs
The news came first from a LinkedIn user, Alex Graner. Alex announced his departure from Wildlight Entertainment, speaking of his layoff from the studio. The post also goes on to mention how other employees were also affected, which was further substantiated by similar posts cropping up on the site.
Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game.
— Wildlight Entertainment (@WildlightEnt) February 12, 2026
We're proud of the team, talent, and the product we've created together. We're also grateful…
Wildlight Entertainment also publicly acknowledged the same, mentioning that they had to go through with the ‘difficult decision’ to part its ways with ‘a number of our team members’, while keeping their core dev team intact.
Interestingly enough, the post does mention that Wildlight would continue on to innovate and support the game, a statement that might not age well.
What Was The Cause For The Layoffs?
Despite popular belief, there was barely anything controversial about Highguard. The game featured far less distractions, and was a pretty clear cut fantasy shooter.
However, Highguard was released in a market that had already grown sick and tired of hero shooters, and wasn’t particularly amazing or innovative in any way. It’s not a bad game per se, just mediocre.
The game was barely an upgrade over Apex Legends, and some parts of the latter felt a lot more smoother and well refined. The game was also lacking a lot of content, and releasing it in that state was an eventual death sentence.
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Couple this with the fact that it was touted as being the killer reveal of The Game Awards 2025 (by none other than show host and creator Geoff Keighley himself), and you can see that the game was set up for failure from the get go.
The game basically tanked at launch, and player count rapidly declined to around a thousand players (as opposed to over 97,000 at the start!), leaving all hope for future content as an impossible dream.
What This Means For The Future of Highguard
In a nutshell, not a whole lot. While Wildlight Entertainment has mentioned in its post that they would continue to support and develop for the game, it’s obvious that they are on borrowed time right now.
Firing a large section of your team does no good to anyone, and most certainly does not bode well to the public eye either. Highguard is realistically going to be shut down very soon, and there won’t be a whole lot to do for us players.
If anything, this should serve as a cautionary tale to future game devs, and serve as an insight on to the current cutthroat state of the video game industry.
