In just a matter of weeks, the raid shooter Highguard has gone from making a big splash to a cautionary tale on par with Sony’s Concord. According to Ampere Analysis, over 1.5 million players tried Highguard in January 2026. But most of those players simply didn’t stick around after sampling the experience.
The Game Business’ co-founder Chris Dring shared Ampere’s data on X, and noted that Highguard’s performance was on par with Palworld, DayZ, and Red Dead Redemption 2 during that time.
Around 1.54 million people played Highguard during January, around the same number as Palworld, DayZ and Red Dead Redemption 2 (Ampere data)
— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) February 14, 2026
Following a rapid decrease in players, Highguard developer Wildlight was hit by massive layoffs just over two weeks after the game was released. Soon after its launch, Highguard peaked with 100,000 concurrent players on Steam. Unfortunately, those numbers were short-lived, and the cause for Highguard’s downfall remains under debate.
Josh Sobel, a lead tech artist who was one of the devs laid off by Wildlight, said “it was all downhill from there” after Geoff Keighley gave the company a prime trailer spot at The Game Awards. Sobel went on to suggest that toxic gamers pushed for Highguard to fail, but subsequently deleted his X account. Even Keighley has been blamed for setting expectations too high, although other industry figures have defended The Game Awards’ founder.
Unlike Concord, Highguard isn’t completely dead. But it’s unclear if Wildlight will be able to deliver everything promised in Highguard’s content calendar for 2026. Jason McCord–the creative director of Highguard–has confirmed that he is one of the remaining developers at Wildlight. He also described the layoffs as “a kick to the head like nothing you can imagine.”
