Wildlight Entertainment is shutting down Highguard on March 12, 2026, barely over six weeks since its launch, having failed to maintain enough players to sustain long-term development.
Highguard was announced at the climax of The Game Awards 2025 and initially launched to one million players, but that number quickly fell and Wildlight soon announced that it had laid off a larger amount of the team while keep a core group in place to support the title. Following this, it was reported that Tencent had pulled its funding from the project.
Now, the developer as confirmed that Highguard failed to attract enough players to keep things ticking over.
Today we’re sharing difficult news. 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. Despite the passion and hard work of our team, we have not been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long term. Servers will remain online until March 12th. 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.
The team is excited to release one final game update to enjoy in the remaining life of the game. We’ll be adding a new Warden, a new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees! Full patch notes are coming, and we’re targeting tonight or tomorrow morning for patch release. From all of us at Wildlight, thank you for playing, for supporting us, and for being part of Highguard’s story.
[Source – Highguard on X]