The better part of two months after Highguard showed up at the end of The Game Awards 2025 and was promptly lambasted by players around the world for being yet another new hero shooter in an extremely oversaturated market, the game is now actually out on Xbox, PC, and PS5 — and a new re-reveal showcase has given gamers an in-depth look at how it sets itself apart from the crowd. Or is trying to, anyway.
With the understanding that Highguard is a 3v3 PvP experience that blends traditional ability-driven engagements with battle royale-style looting and an attack/defend tug of war of base raids inspired by multiplayer survival games, many are giving it a fair shake, especially since it’s free-to-play.
There is, perhaps, an alternate universe out there where Highguard is a chart-topping, explosive success, but the odds of it having a launch like that plummeted after its disastrous reveal at The Game Awards that failed to properly showcase what it truly was. “That’s on us. We could have made something that did a better job of highlighting the unique loop of the game,” Wildlight CEO Dusty Welch admitted.
The game dug itself into a hole that it’s now fighting to climb out of. In its efforts to do that, the studio is simply focusing on making Highguard as good as it can be, and letting the title speak for itself.
“Being the ire of the internet hate machine sucks, but at the same time, I try to just focus on making the best game I can and getting that game into people’s hands. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters,” Alavi continued.
“Internet’s gonna internet. If you’re gonna be good at live service, you have to listen to the note behind the note,” product and publishing VP Jason Torfin added. “Yeah, there are indications that there’s fatigue, that they’re confused, that they don’t know these things. So it’s on us to make sure we respond to that, and we’re gonna do that.”
Despite how crowded the hero shooter space is, Wildlight believes it has “a great opportunity to find our audience with Highguard,” as “The shooter space has only continued to get larger.” In an effort to facilitate long-term growth, it has an ambitious plan to introduce new “Warden” heroes, weapons, bases to attack and defend, and more every two months in “Episode” updates, with Episode 2 slated to release just two weeks after launch.
Ultimately, only time will tell if Highguard is able to establish a big enough foothold to build towards larger success from. But at the very least, its not dependent on taking the gaming community by storm.
What’s your opinion of Highguard, based on what you’ve seen of it thus far? Are you going to give it a shot yourself, or does it ultimately not interest you very much? Do you believe it will find success? Let me know in the comments.
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