Highguard studio lays off most staff just weeks after January 26 launch

by

Just over two weeks after launching its multiplayer shooter, Highguard, on January 26th for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, Wildlight Entertainment has significantly reduced its staff.

News broke today that Wildlight Entertainment had layoffs, impacting most of its design team. Alex Graner, a former senior designer, announced on LinkedIn that he was affected, and expressed disappointment about unreleased content he had been working on for the game Highguard. While the exact number of employees let go hasn’t been officially confirmed, Wildlight’s LinkedIn profile indicates the company had between 51 and 200 employees.

Around two hours after Graner shared the news, Wildlight officially announced layoffs on X (formerly Twitter). The company stated they made the very difficult decision to let go of some employees, but would retain a small team of developers to keep working on and supporting the game. Wildlight expressed pride in the team and the game they built, and thanked players for trying it and for being part of the community. The mention of a ‘core group of developers’ suggests that development on Highguard will continue, but with fewer people.

Today, we made the very difficult decision to reduce our team size. While some talented people are leaving, we’re maintaining a core group of developers who will continue to improve and support the game.

We’re proud of the team, talent, and the product we’ve created together. We’re also grateful…

— Wildlight Entertainment (@WildlightEnt) February 12, 2026

Highguard was unveiled at The Game Awards 2025 in December, during the final moments of the show – a spot usually saved for highly anticipated games. However, the initial reaction from viewers was rather muted. Many wondered why it was chosen to close the show, and some felt the trailer didn’t effectively demonstrate the game’s mechanics or explain what made it unique compared to other multiplayer shooting games.

The game was created by a team of experienced developers who had previously worked on popular titles like Call of Duty, Apex Legends, and Titanfall, so there was a lot of anticipation for its release. Unfortunately, the marketing campaign wasn’t very strong, with little promotion before launch. The game was announced with very little warning after a long period of no news.

I jumped into Highguard when it launched on January 26th, and honestly, the first impressions from the press were really good! A lot of them said it did something new with the shooter formula, which was cool. On launch day, SteamDB showed nearly 97,000 of us playing at the same time! It pulled in almost 100,000 players on PC and had around 380,000 people watching streams on Twitch, which is pretty awesome for a new game.

Initial data from Circana showed that the game Highguard had a promising start, ranking among the top 10 most played games on Steam in the US and in the top 20 on PlayStation and Xbox. However, according to Circana’s Mat Piscatella, player numbers quickly dropped off. Within two weeks of launch, the number of players online at the same time on Steam fell to 4,524. By the time layoffs were announced, concurrent PC players had dipped to 3,600, and recent reports indicate the game now has fewer than 3,000 active players.

Shortly after the game launched, some changes were made to how it played. Highguard originally started with 3v3 battles, but the developers quickly switched to a more popular 5v5 format based on player feedback. Wildlight kept players informed with regular updates on future content, promising a full year of new features. They announced a plan for monthly updates over seven episodes, each adding new items, game modes, and playable characters. The team also stated they intended to update this game more often than their previous work, including Apex Legends.

These job cuts happened just under three weeks after the game’s launch, and shortly after the studio leader, Chad Grenier, made comments suggesting player numbers weren’t a major concern – even implying success wasn’t tied to reaching a large audience.

Geoff Keighley, the organizer of The Game Awards, publicly expressed his disappointment, calling the situation “a sad and unfortunate outcome” for a game he had previously enjoyed playing.

People online have been comparing the new game, Highguard, to Concord, a similar shooter from Sony that was quickly removed from sale after its release. Both games tried to compete with popular titles like Apex Legends and Overwatch – which recently received a major update – by offering a team-based hero shooter experience.

Wildlight plans to continue providing support for Highguard, though with a reduced team. They will maintain a small core group of developers. We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.

Read More

2026-02-12 21:47