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Highguard Shuts Down Today After 45 Days Following Rocky Launch

A former lead technical artist apologizes for a misdirected outburst, saying hostile discourse was not the primary cause.

Overview

  • Wildlight is turning off Highguard’s servers on March 12, ending the free-to-play hero shooter roughly six weeks after its late January release.
  • Former lead technical artist Josh Sobel reactivated his X account and called his now-deleted February post a mistake driven by stress, anger and little sleep.
  • Sobel said parts of the online discourse had “very dark corners” that may have sped up the collapse but he does not view it as the main cause.
  • Coverage notes the game drew a large crowd at launch—around 100,000 peak concurrents and roughly 1.5 million early players—but struggled to retain them.
  • The remaining team shipped a final content update last week, giving players a last chance to jump in before the shutdown.