[STEAM] Most of Highguard Studio Has Been Laid Off Says Former Dev, Wildlight Confirms

[Steam 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Layoffs have hit the development studio Wildlight Entertainment, makers of the recently released multiplayer shooter Highguard. This comes just over two weeks after the free-to-play game's January 26 launch date.

Former senior level designer

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, "Unfortunately, along with most of the team at Wildlight, I was laid off today." While there currently is no confirmed number of people who were laid off, the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

states that its size is/was 51-200 employees.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

the layoffs with a statement reading, "Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game."

On BlueSky,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

(which tracks game sales and engagement) highlighted, "Highguard debuted in the top 10 in weekly active users on US Steam, was top 20 on both US PlayStation and Xbox (Circana Player Engagement Tracker week ending 1/31/26) and yet..."

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, Highguard reached a peak concurrent player count of 97,249 on PC via Steam on release day and experienced a sharp decline with only 4,524 players two weeks after launch.

Graner also said, "This one really stings as there was a lot of unreleased content I was really looking forward to that I and others designed for Highguard." While it initially had a 3v3 competitive mode, a 5v5 mode was implemented just days after release due to player reception to the small scale of the original mode. The team revealed a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

that included updates with new items, modes, and characters each month throughout the year packed into seven separate episodes; it's unclear how the layoffs will affect the studio's plans as of now, but Widllight says it'll continue to support the game.

This story is developing.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up