[STEAM] Tencent Was Quietly Backing Highguard Studio, According to Report

[Steam 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Highguard, the free-to-play PvP "raid shooter" announced at The Game Awards last year and released to preemptive criticism and mockery only for most of its developers to be laid off just weeks after launch, was apparently financially backed by Tencent, according to a report.

This comes from

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

that the ******** gaming mogul was the primary financial backer behind developer Wildlight Entertainment, an arrangement that was not publicly shared by either company.

Prior to this report, it was unclear who was funding Wildlight, despite Highguard seemingly being in development for a number of years prior to its announcement at The Game Awards in December. Its

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

has long included the line that Wildlight is "a new, fully-funded entertainment studio."

That grand announcement, its time and place

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

rather than the studio,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, with a number of content creators declaring the game dead before it had even released. Upon launch, Highguard

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

but critic reviews

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

were just so-so and user scores were low. Just a few weeks later, developers from Wildlight revealed that

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. Since then,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

has reflected that Highguard was "turned into a joke from minute one" due to false assumptions made from the TGA trailer, and a number of other high-profile developers have

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

It remains unclear how heavily reliant Wildlight was on Tencent, or whether a decision to pull funding was made at some point that led to the mass layoffs. Wildlight's future as a studio also remains unclear, with a studio statement saying that it would retain a "core group of developers" to keep Highguard going. However, the game's

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

earlier today and has yet to be restored, leading some to speculate that the game or even the studio is about to fully shut down.



Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up