When The Game Awards 2025 ended with a trailer for Highguard, a new FPS from some ex-Titanfall devs, it failed to wow the internet, and the weeks of radio silence that followed only provided a void that was quickly filled by speculation, debate, and skepticism. Now, weeks later, Highguard has finally launched, and everyone has a chance to play it and really figure out what this game is, likely determining if it will be a hit or another short-lived multiplayer flop like Concord. Early impressions are that it’s solid, but many are struggling to even play the game due to server queues, disconnects, and performance issues on console and PC.
Highguard went live on January 26 across consoles and PC to a large amount of confusion, curiosity, and, sure, some actual hype. The devs did a big deep dive on Monday, revealing that the game is a 3v3 PVP “raid shooter.” This translates into what looks like a game that mixes together Rainbow Six Siege’s base defense mechanics, MOBA-like clashes between teams in the field, gear upgrades, and a final big raid on one of the team’s bases to decide who wins the match.
From what I’ve seen so far and played, it could be a lot of fun. Our preview of the new FPS is similarly positive about Highguard. But the game isn’t running well on my RTX 5070 PC, even at medium settings with DLSS. And I’m not alone in dealing with performance issues and other problems.
Highguard’s PC problems and no FOV slider on PS5
On the game’s subreddit, more than a few players are complaining about Highguard running poorly on their rigs, even those with solid specs. Other players are having issues with the game’s settings not changing despite multiple attempts to do so. Some are also running into a bug where dialogue is missing during the tutorial. On console, Highguard lacks an FOV slider, an issue that led to a lot of angry fans when Borderlands 4 was missing the same popular feature on PS5 and Xbox. Borderlands 4 eventually added it. I’ll be curious to see if Highguard does, too. Players are also complaining about the game looking blurry on consoles, which might be a quicker fix.
Another issue that will likely be smoothed out over the next 24 hours is players getting stuck in server queues or getting disconnected while playing. Considering the fact that nearly 98k players all tried to play Highguard on Steam alone, according to SteamDB data, I’d bet that the servers are just struggling to keep up with the demand. It’s annoying for gamers, but I can imagine the devs are thankful that so many people want to play Highguard that the servers are struggling to get them all in.
Concord didn’t have such high playercount numbers on Steam. In fact, it failed to crack 1,000 concurrent players. Highguard has been compared many times by online commentators to that live-service flop, which shut down less than a month after its dismal launch. It seems all but certain that Highguard will stick around a bit longer than that. Hopefully some of the technical issues and bugs can be ironed out. The devs have confirmed they have around a year of content in development for Highguard, which will get regular updates like most live-service games.
Now that it’s finally out, all the speculation can be replaced with what tends to come next when live-service games launch: People claiming it’s a dead game.
