![[Update] Most of Highguard Developer Wildlight Has Been Laid Off](/articles_media/images/highguard-developer-wildlight-hit-with-layoffs-565704_expanded.jpg)
[Update] Most of Highguard Developer Wildlight Has Been Laid Off - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 11 February 2026 / 2,820 Views
Developer Wildlight has provided an update on social media confirming the lay offs, however, a small team will continue to support Highguard.
"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," said Wildlight.
"We're proud of the team, talent, and the product we've created together. We're also grateful for players who gave the game a shot, and those who continue to be a part of our community."
Highguard developer Wildlight Entertainment has been hit with layoffs a little over two weeks after the free-to-play PvP raid shooter released, according to Level Designer Alex Graner in a LinkedIn post.
"Unfortunately, along with most of the team at Wildlight, I was laid off today," said Graner.
"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. However, I'm excited for my next adventure. If your team or anyone you know needs an experienced Level Designer, hit me up!"
The game reached a peak of 97,249 concurrent players on Steam on its launch day, but numbers quickly fell off to below 20,000 concurrent players within a couple of days and has been sitting under 10,000 for a week now.
Highguard released for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam on January 26.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Concord 2: Electric HorseGaloo
Me and a couple friends have enjoyed playing this game. Just haven't had much time in the last week to play. Very unfortunate.
Most of this is because the game was picked to be the last game on TGA.
Insane how much hate people decide to throw on a game by any one single stupid thing.
Letting the game die a slow death by it being uninteresing is completely normal, nobody needs to play a game they don't want to, so it happens, but some people are cheering the game/studio failure.
Sadly today the vocal human scum are far too powerful thanks to social media, insane shit spreads to fast and sometimes there is just nothing that can't be made about it.
Yes, the game would have been hugely successful if it hadn't been at the awards. That's why the defenders of this game always write about why the game is so great. Wait... They never write about why the game is so incredibly good? They just criticize the critics? And the defenders never play the game themselves? And they never buy the games they defend?
Even if you think that posts like this make you a better person than others, I have to disappoint you. You're not!
You are too much into your head, brother, whatever you are doing, keep doing it to yourself.
Just open any social media and type the name of this game and watch people already hoping other games nobody even played yet crash and burn as well.
Every game has its own faults, but the absurd behavior people have nowdays is a major problem in every aspect of society, gaming is only of them.
Again, the game dying by not been good or interesting is a normal reaction, but celebratinh and hoping a game you did not even played, because you simply didn't like it or to follow someone else is a major problem.
I’m having a hard time gauging how much of this is a consequence of getting mass review bombed across Steam, MetaCritic, etc…hm. The gameplay definitely didn’t keep players engaged, so maybe this game was DOA with or without the hate campaign. Not sure.
It got concorded and it's the worst trend in gaming. Ganging up, mocking and ridiculing on a game just because you don't like it is taking it way too far IMO.
Edit: people will say "nothing to do with hate it's just bad game". but Concord and Highguard couldn't survive longer than a month and that only happens with mass dogpiling
The problem was the timing, after Concord, people dont want more of those kind of games and Highguard appears in the last thing in the Game Awards, for me was interesting, but that trailer cause the hate of the players. Also if the game were fun to play then the numbers will continue rising now that the updates are coming. If the game is fun to play it doesnt matter if people say is bad, word of mouth will do its job and the game will succed.
^ this. Argosv has a point. Devs will need to stop this "modern audience" chasing....
it has killed enough studios now. People should try to avoid being a new concord. Devs need to stop trying to please twitter reviewers that don't buy or support their games, and instead listen to the biggest mass of player bases, and what they want.
What is this "modern audience" and how was Highguard chasing it?
These the same twitter reviewers who didn't even play this, Concord and other games because they decided they were bad from just looking at them or too obsessed with one aspect of character design when they are "games" to be played not oggled at?
Then yeah, I agree. Devs should make the games they want, like in this case.
As I play Romeo is a Deadman, it just makes me love Suda51 more and I didn't think it was possible. It's his most out there game since Silver Case or Killer 7. He just makes what he wants and gaming is better for it. Something unique and interesting. Not everything needs to be the biggest budget or most polished. Just make what you want. Minecraft started as a voxel love letter fan game of a SEGA Saturn game. Most stuff will never be minecraft success but in both examples you build a fanbase that sticks around. Trend chasing is more often then not a fools errand.
"Not everything needs to be the biggest budget or most polished. Just make what you want."
You are assuming they didn't do that? Prehaps they wanted to make a 3v3 MP base attacking game and that's what they made. Hardly even trend chasing, if it was, it would be a extraction shooter. :P
“Just make what you want.” often isn’y followed up with heavy layoffs within a month of launch. Sounds to me there were bigger ambitions for this game.
So which is it? Follow trends or making what they want? Following trends might keep you afloat. What if they want to follow trends?
Yet, you hit the right thing entirely. Ambitions.
Highguard people were obviously making a game to try and be the next big thing in PvP MP gaming, didn't work. Arc Raiders people were just making a extraction shooter (chasing a trend?), like many others (chasing a trend), it worked (and then some).
Concord people wanted to make the next big PvP MP game, didn't work. Helldivers 2 people were just making a sequel to HD1 (what they wanted), ended up being biggest game for Sony in years.
It's like none of these people, or us, know what the general gaming audience really wants.
Concord literally shut down just 14 days after release.
It can take much longer than 2 weeks for word of mouth to spread but people didn't want to even give it a chance.
Nah. It was doomed the moment it was greenlit. They were chasing a trend. By the time it came out that trend was dead. They had horrible art design, ripping off a style writing and presentation that was already worn out. The MCU style which games had been doing for almost a decade. Even Gears 4 did it in 2016. Forspoken did it and hurt it. Does not help the MCU craze is dead. Everything about Concord was opposite of how to make a successful game. They put the cart before the horse. Chased a game from 2016 and release it in 2024, had plans to make it "Stars Wars level" franchise, Mighty No 9 also tried that. Bad art. Bad writing. Mediocre gameplay. Nothing was going to save it. It is the prime example of most of hey fellow kid meme of a game by corp committee.
These days thanks to internet, the word of mouth moves faster than ever, it just takes 1 or 2 days to reach everyone. Look how thanks to one stream Among Us reach high numbers of players. Before internet or social media, it took weeks to word of mouth reach people, it was the true word of mouth when you know how good it really is by talking in the school, work, streets, etc.
We need to understand that today, people´s attention moves faster than ever, this is how our world works now thanks to the technology and reach. Industries have already understand that this, thats why they move faster now, new realesas, more investment in research than before.
That is the good and bad of this new reality one bad first impression are you are doom forever and try to recover is almost imposible, specially this kind of games, cause if we see No Man Sky thanks that game you can play solo, it got the chance to recover, but a live service game needs to get it in the first days, like you said people didnt give them enough time, but that is the thing now, people have no time to w8 and move for the next, we no more walk, we run and if you stop you are done.
I'd agree with you. if it was at least a month. was two weeks long enough to experience everything concord had to offer? Dedicated platinum trophy hunters didn't even get enough time to get the Platinum the game was shut down so fast.
I think very little.... review scores don't matter, either from critics or players.... what matters is if the game is fun to play, and can keep people playing. Apparently its boring as f***.
Shame, even 10k players at a time should've been enough to keep it afloat.
The lowest daily concurrent peak is yesterday with 3580. That’s people playing at the same time. Over 24 hours in a day that would likely be 20k+ people.
Why are people upvoting a factually incorrect statement that can be found on the internet in 10 seconds ?
Because you're too stupid to read statistics.
https://imgur.com/a/sPncnBp
You’re talking about the number of people playing it at the exact same moment in time, not the number of people playing it in a day. How can you not understand this basic information from the charts?
2k is like it’s absolute lowest concurrent user count the game has ever had. That’s 2,000 people playing at the same time, in the middle of the night for US timezones. You’re taking that number and saying that’s how many people played in a day. Utter nonsense.
