Highguard is shutting down in lower than two weeks and it simply obtained its largest replace ever. It contains the hero shooter’s tenth character, a brand new weapon, and a complete talent tree. Inventive director Jason McCord mentioned the replace was pushed out by Wildlight Leisure’s remaining “skeleton crew” and that they wished to launch the brand new content material even when it “solely will get performed by a couple of thousand folks.” The replace arrives after sport director and studio head Chad Grenier pushed again in opposition to conspiracy theories blaming the sport’s failure on poisonous positivity.
“That is our remaining replace and it’s huge,” he posted on X on March 4. “Props to the skeleton crew at Wildlight for wanting to complete it and ship it to our remaining gamers, even when it solely will get performed by a couple of thousand folks. They weren’t requested to. They requested if they might end it up and get it on the market.”
The replace’s largest change is an XP system for leveling up and a talent tree that lets gamers improve their characters round sure methods. The 4 subclasses are Raider (attacking), Harvester (sources), Treasure Hunter (loot), and Protector (protection). The perks in every of these areas may be combined and matched to create distinctive hero builds. The replace additionally provides Koldo, a tank character trapped in a go well with of armor, and the Switchback marksman rifle.
Out of cash and out of time
Why wait so as to add all these things? McCord mentioned it simply wasn’t prepared but. “None of this was executed at launch,” he wrote on Wednesday. “Particularly the Talent Bushes. The crew crunched the previous few weeks to get it executed. Some stuff (Koldo, Switchback) was partially executed, scheduled for future seasons. The crew picked the stuff that was closest to completion and completed it up.”
Highguard‘s remaining replace arrives simply eight days earlier than the sport’s servers go offline perpetually. The shutdown comes lower than two months after the hero shooter from Apex Legends and Titanfall veterans launched. Regardless of gamers preemptively calling it a “Harmony 2.0” following a poor reveal trailer on the 2026 Recreation Awards, the free-to-play sport netted practically 100,000 concurrent gamers on PC throughout its first 24 hours.
However most of these gamers, goosed by a flood of early detrimental Steam opinions from folks with little time spent taking part in the sport, didn’t stick round. Simply weeks later Wildlight Leisure laid off a lot of the workers after Tencent reportedly yanked funding following missed launch targets. Solely round 20 builders remained as new modes had been launched to attempt to give Highguard one final push. Its surprising and untimely shutdown was introduced earlier this week. The sport lasted 31 days longer than Harmony.
“That’s not truly what occurred”
Like that sport, Highguard grew to become the goal of an anti-live-service and anti-woke backlash on-line which, even when it wasn’t liable for the sport’s final failure, made the vibes surrounding the sport stink to excessive heaven. “That’s not truly what occurred,” Grenier wrote in response to claims that Highguard was the sufferer of builders being unwilling to criticize each other’s work. “We had been very vital in the direction of the venture and one another. The crew was inspired and consistently spoke their thoughts. We at all times tried to place sport and gamers first. We at all times tried to place gamers first. The crew was very vital.”
He continued, “On the finish of the day, we simply made a couple of errors, and made a sport that didn’t resonate like our previous video games did. Sadly, it doesn’t matter although and no person will know the true story of the studio or sport, and the rumors and hypothesis shall be what’s on the market.”
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