As Highguard approaches its one-month anniversary, the hero shooter’s future is harder than ever to discern. But despite dwindling player numbers and recent layoffs, the developers are still working on getting the multiplayer game’s next update out.
There’s been relative radio silence from Wildlight Entertainment since mass layoffs at the California-based studio last week. Then, when Highguard‘s website went down yesterday, people began to assume the worst. The studio declined to comment on the status of the game when Kotaku reached out, but now a developer on the Highguard Discord has given remaining players a scrap of insight into where things are at.
“Not sure on the timeframe, but basically needs to be transferred and simplified,” moderator WL_Coronach wrote in response to a fan asking about the website being down. “Low priority atm (reputational damage already done). Now we just need to focus on delivering updates and content to improve.”
What exactly those updates consist of remains to be seen. Wildlight was in the midst of delivering on its “Episode 2” commitments when everyone outside of a “core” team was laid off last week. An ambitious, year-long roadmap shared at launch is likely being completely overhauled at this point. One of the big questions is just how much of this content was already pretty far along or sitting in queue versus having to be built from scratch.
The big additions to Highguard thus far have been a new playable hero and a 5v5 mode, as well as the option to do 3v3 ranked. While initial criticisms of the game have called for portions of its resource gathering and flag capturing phases to be reworked, what existing players probably want more than anything are additional characters and loot. The game launched with a starting roster of only eight. In 5v5, the more popular of the two modes, that’s a lot of repeats. The gun and gear pools are also pretty light.
It’s hard to imagine any number of new guns or characters pulling Highguard out of its current live-service tailspin. With time and resources, there’s a strong foundation that Wildlight could build on. But if money is already evaporating and players aren’t spending much on the free-to-play game’s marketplace, it’s hard to imagine it having the runway necessary to mount a real comeback.
