https://xcancel.com/wario64/status/2028927192265101484
Today we’re sharing difficult news. We have made the decision to permanently shutdown Highguard on March 12th.
Sorry, posting an image is not working properly.
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Wild how little runway this game was given. I guess the expectation was literally that it was either a monster hit on day one, or the plug is pulled immediately. It’s just difficult to understand how anyone thought it had a realistic chance.
ETA: Just to be clear, by “anyone” I mean on the developer/investor side. Obviously the players didn’t know in advance that they only had enough money to keep the studio going for 2 weeks
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It was a new franchise, Free to play, character based, multiplayer only, with MOBA inspired gameplay : that is not something that people are rushing to play. When I saw that trailer at the Game Awards, I knew it was going to fail miserably. There was 1% chance it could carve its own little niche of players.
Even Concord was more enticing than Highguard in my opinion and we know how long that one lasted. They will all shutdown as soon as they launch if they continue releasing half-baked and weird looking multiplayer only games.
It doesn’t bode well for Marathon later this week…
Thoroughly depth of its performance.
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Interesting. They tried. They really tried, but it just wasn’t viable in the long term, so I guess it was better to cut the losses.
I cant read any of this 
The industry is cutthroat right now, but it’s insane to me how quickly companies give up at this point. Not even fortnite became a sensation overnight. It got lucky off a side mode while still developing what was the the main game. Once that gradually got a lot more popular they switched gears up and became reinvesting into that success. Fortnite is only still hugely popular because it gets a lot of support, consistent updates, and is always trying to build it’s audience everywhere.
At this point it feels like money laundering. I get that it sucks for developers and studios and even publishers, but truly why did they bother? Unless the game is full to the brim with content at launch then it’s going to struggle competing against long existing games in the sub genres. Especially if it doesn’t involve existing IP like Marvel Rivals and chooses to chase trends that don’t even really exist (especially not anymore). Overwatch launched in 2016 as a premium priced game (I think like $40). If it launched for the first time as a free to play today then it’d probably be dead on arrival itself. Hero shooters haven’t really taken off as a super popular genre. Overwatch also had the added benefit of a lot of story trailers building a connection between the characters and players even though there wasn’t really an in game story.
Maybe if the game had released as a PVE full squad based hero shooter with a start and finish story and then built it’s PVP and live service off of that? That’s kinda what Destiny did, and it’d be doing something that there isn’t a lot of in the genre (like overwatch gave up on its big PVE plans). But free to play live service at this point feels like a death sentence.
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Game publishers in 2026 when the game doesn’t become Fortnite on day one: “We’ve tried nothing, and now we’re all out of ideas”
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The writing was on the wall honestly. The game wasn’t bad of what I played, it was just alright. Hope the devs here can find more work in the future 
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It’s too bad someone can’t just buy it from them. I don’t know what business model can make it work but like if Xbox bought it for Pennies and put it in as a gamepass game and see what happens. Even assuming it never takes off it is at least another game in the library.
lots of these projects got their backing during the Covid renevue surge where gaming looked like the next thing for banks and venture capital. Big names used this to fund a AAA studio of their own (the Mindseye studio, Maverick from the Forza heads, Highguard, …). That means for a lot of these projects there is debt and now the rates are pretty unsustainable in this current climate. So either you land the next big hit or you must close. Nobody right now has money or the will to finance your rescue.
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I can understand that, and hopefully things begin to even out with the COVID surge after effects snuffing out (as harsh as that sounds). I think somewhere here someone shared a quote about gaming growing year over year if you just ignore the COVID boom and treat it like the outlier it was. It still sounds like this could’ve been avoidable. For one it’s just hilarious to me that big names with big money couldn’t connect the dots that games take several years to develop and it was a huge risk to think the COVID boom would last that long. But for the studios, everything is riding on the line and this is the best they can do? Like this is their big bet? Lock down ended like three years ago. They had a lot of time to re-examine the market and make changes before launch. They also had time to read the writing on the wall, cut their losses, and at least salvage the situation before it ballooned and affected them financially even more.
The sad part is I think they would at least survive little longer than here if the company didn’t decide to practically shut down the studio. Once that happened, there’s no way this game would receive a come back like Halo Infinite or No Man’s Sky (in live service style). It’s also possible that it influenced gamers to stop playing as they felt they saw the writing on the wall. All in all, a crushing blow.
i’m pretty sure investors saw some risks. but everyone thinks: hey i will be the one to get on top of all of this, how can it not i have Leslie Benzies.
The Mindseye guys tried to pivot, didnt work out.
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And then the investors went and did it all again with AI… we never learn. I guess why would we when investors don’t actually face consequences for it and all the studios just take money thinking they have the winning game.
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The thing that makes me a little sad is how a GAAS like this just disappears forever when it fails. A single player game, or even a multiplayer game with peer to peer, even if it flops will still always exist for the few people that did like it, or even for new gamers to discover it in the future.
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Agreed. It’s one of the numerous reasons I despise the bizarre crowing there is about games like this. Some people enjoyed it, and they won’t be able to anymore. That’s a bad outcome for everyone, from creative to punter.
I quite liked the game - it didn’t grab me, but I like games that try something new. It had some cool ideas and also a few issues of pacing/flow, and I never saw high-level play that really made use of the sandbox. A shame.
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