Highguard’s sudden website blackout has players questioning what’s next for the shooter.
Loading into Highguard lately has felt more uncertain than ever. The free-to-play PvP hero shooter is back in the spotlight after its official website abruptly went offline, just as a report revealed Tencent as the game’s primary financial backer. With development already heavily scaled back, players are left wondering if the game, and possibly its studio, can continue at all.
Earlier on Wednesday (18 February SGT), PlayHighguard.com was replaced with a static page showing only the game’s logo and the message: “This site is currently unavailable.” Reports from Kotaku indicate it has been offline since at least 7:50 AM EST and has yet to be restored.
Highguard was revealed at The Game Awards last December, introduced on stage by host Geoff Keighley rather than the developers themselves. The announcement quickly drew scepticism and mockery online, with many creators and players openly questioning the project’s direction before the game had even launched.
Despite the criticism, Highguard launched to nearly 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, but also hit Overwhelmingly Negative review status on day one. Interest was high, but criticism arrived just as fast, targeting gameplay structure, balance, and overall design choices. In the weeks that followed, player numbers dropped to around 8,000 to 9,000 concurrents, pushing developers to focus on turning the community-requested 5v5 mode into a permanent mode.
Wildlight Entertainment dealt another blow to players and devs alike, announcing widespread layoffs that cut most of the development team. A smaller “core group” remained to keep Highguard live, but little clarity was given on what support would continue or for how long.
Highguard’s website outage and unclear funding raise fears for the shooter
According to a report by Game File, Tencent was said to be the primary financial backer behind Wildlight Entertainment, a relationship that had never been made public. Until now, it was unclear who funded the studio, despite Highguard spending several years in development prior to its reveal. Wildlight’s LinkedIn page had only described the company as a “new, fully funded entertainment studio,” without naming investors.
How reliant Wildlight was on Tencent remains unknown, as does whether changes in funding contributed to the mass layoffs. Combined with the sudden website blackout, these factors have left the community uneasy.
While temporary outages are not uncommon, the silence has sparked widespread speculation that Highguard could be approaching a full shutdown, or that Wildlight itself may be nearing the end. For now, the servers remain online, but players are left asking not what the next update will bring, but whether the shooter will still be around in the months ahead.
