Highguard studio Wildlight Entertainment reportedly has less than 20 people remaining to work on the game following a round of devastating layoffs just weeks after the game’s launch.
This comes from a new Bloomberg report, which tells the story of Wildlight’s rise and fall since its founders first assembled the team back in 2021. Made up of Respawn veterans, the group hoped to recreate the successes of Apex Legends and Titanfall, initially with a survival-focused shooter.
When that design didn’t quite work as well as they’d hoped, they scrapped it and pivoted to Highguard, leaving remnants of the original survival game in the final draft of what was now a hero shooter. As the game progressed, testers had positive feedback that had the developers hopeful, though notably they also said it was more fun on microphone with voice chat, and the experience was too complicated and less fun without them.
Sources speaking to Bloomberg say the studio largely had a positive culture and the team felt good about what they were making up until the game’s announcement at The Game Awards last December, which apparently came about at Geoff Keighley’s urging after he enjoyed what he played of it. The team originally intended to announce and launch Highguard simultaneously, but with The Game Awards announcement that left a month-and-a-half-long silence between announcement and launch during which the internet had a field day.
The game launched to a celebration-worthy number of Steam concurrents, but unfortunately was unable to retain players for very long at all, meaning it made very little money from microtransactions. Reviews were also poor. Though the developers at Wildlight believed they had financial runway to improve, financial backer Tencent suddenly pulled its funding, and most of the 100-person team was laid off as a result. Fewer than 20 individuals remain to try and save Highguard. Those developers have recently reassured that a new patch is on the way, after a website issue led players to believe the whole game was being taken down.
The full story is at Bloomberg.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
