Highguard Still Has Over 20 People Playing It Despite Servers Being Shut Down

On March 12, the gaming world said goodbye to Highguard, just 45 days after its launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Despite the shooter’s servers being officially offline for nearly 24 hours at the time of writing, there still appear to be more than 20 active Highguard players who are seemingly refusing to accept reality and turn off the now-defunct PvP raid shooter from Wildlight Entertainment.

First revealed during last year’s massive Game Awards ceremony, Highguard has now, unfortunately, joined the likes of Concord and The Day Before as one of the few games to be shut down in its first few weeks of life. There are tons of theories as to why the game failed, with a former developer even theorizing that Wildlight leaned too hard into the competitive scene for Highguard. Some also believe that it was doomed for failure when host Geoff Keighley reportedly insisted on the game taking the final coveted spot at the Game Awards. With titles like Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, Tomb Raider: Catalyst, and Divinity all being revealed during the event, another live-service hero shooter closing the Game Awards prompted immediate backlash and seemingly set the title up for a rough few months.

There Are Still More Than 20 People Playing Highguard

Highguard found decent success upon its release in late January, quickly climbing to nearly 100,000 concurrent players on Steam alone. Wildlight later announced that the shooter had attracted 2 million unique players across all of its support platforms, and it looks like some of Highguard‘s fans are refusing to let the game die. As spotted by The Gamer, data from SteamDB shows that there are still more than 20 active players on Highguard nearly 24 hours after the live-service title was shut down. As of 11:18 AM EST on March 13, there are 27 users “playing” Highguard. Although the more likely scenario is that these are either Wildlight developers or players who have simply left the game running in the background and aren’t actually in a match.

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This isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this happen, as there was still one person playing Concord after PlayStation’s biggest flop to date was shut down. Unlike Highguard, which actually managed to attract a decent number of players at launch, Concord only peaked at just under 700 concurrent players on Steam when it was released in late September. PlayStation was seemingly aiming to create the next big hero shooter, akin to Overwatch, but Concord has now become the biggest meme in gaming after the title was shut down after just two weeks. Sadly, Highguard didn’t last much longer, but it certainly had more of a player base during its short lifespan.

Those who were dedicated and committed themselves to Highguard until the very end were treated to one final content update just days before servers were taken offline. Wildlight Entertainment announced the demise of its controversial shooter on March 3, but did release one final Highguard update the very next day, on March 4. The patch added a brand-new Skill Tree, account progression (which many found to be a rather odd choice), a new Warden, and a new weapon.

Wildlight Entertainment was left with very few staff members in the final days of Highguard‘s life, as the studio experienced layoffs less than a month after the game’s launch. Although a shutdown seemed inevitable, Wildlight bosses said they had kept a core team of developers to continue working on the game and delivering new content updates. Despite the dwindling player count, Wildlight did just that, providing fans with new modes, maps, and so much more over the past few weeks. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough to get players back on board with Highguard, as the game was officially delisted on March 12 and now joins the live-service graveyard alongside Concord.