Highguard is shutting down in less than two weeks and it just got its biggest update ever. It includes the hero shooter’s 10th character, a new weapon, and an entire skill tree. Creative director Jason McCord said the update was pushed out by Wildlight Entertainment’s remaining “skeleton crew” and that they wanted to release the new content even if it “only gets played by a few thousand people.” The update arrives after game director and studio head Chad Grenier pushed back against conspiracy theories blaming the game’s failure on toxic positivity.
“This is our final update and it’s big,” he posted on X on March 4. “Props to the skeleton crew at Wildlight for wanting to finish it and ship it to our remaining players, even if it only gets played by a few thousand people. They weren’t asked to. They asked if they could finish it up and get it out there.”
The update’s biggest change is an XP system for leveling up and a skill tree that lets players upgrade their characters around certain strategies. The four subclasses are Raider (attacking), Harvester (resources), Treasure Hunter (loot), and Protector (defense). The perks in each of those areas can be mixed and matched to create unique hero builds. The update also adds Koldo, a tank character trapped in a suit of armor, and the Switchback marksman rifle.
Out of money and out of time
Why wait to add all this stuff? McCord said it just wasn’t ready yet. “None of this was done at launch,” he wrote on Wednesday. “Especially the Skill Trees. The team crunched the last few weeks to get it done. Some stuff (Koldo, Switchback) was partially done, scheduled for future seasons. The team picked the stuff that was closest to completion and finished it up.”
Highguard‘s final update arrives just eight days before the game’s servers go offline forever. The shutdown comes less than two months after the hero shooter from Apex Legends and Titanfall veterans launched. Despite players preemptively calling it a “Concord 2.0” following a poor reveal trailer at the 2026 Game Awards, the free-to-play game netted nearly 100,000 concurrent players on PC during its first 24 hours.
But most of those players, goosed by a flood of early negative Steam reviews from people with little time spent playing the game, didn’t stick around. Just weeks later Wildlight Entertainment laid off most of the staff after Tencent reportedly yanked funding following missed launch goals. Only around 20 developers remained as new modes were introduced to try to give Highguard one last push. Its unexpected and premature shutdown was announced earlier this week. The game lasted 31 days longer than Concord.
“That’s not actually what happened”
Like that game, Highguard became the target of an anti-live-service and anti-woke backlash online which, even if it wasn’t responsible for the game’s ultimate failure, made the vibes surrounding the game stink to high heaven. “That’s not actually what happened,” Grenier wrote in response to claims that Highguard was the victim of developers being unwilling to criticize one another’s work. “We were very critical towards the project and each other. The team was encouraged and constantly spoke their mind. We always tried to put game and players first. We always tried to put players first. The team was very critical.”
He continued, “At the end of the day, we just made a few mistakes, and made a game that didn’t resonate like our past games did. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter though and nobody will know the true story of the studio or game, and the rumors and speculation will be what’s out there.”
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