Highguard will shut down just 45 days after launch — 'We are witnessing the era of two month lifespan shooters'

• Highguard will shut down after just 45 days
• The studio behind the game says it has "not been able to build a sustainable player base"
• It comes amid other high profile live-service flops

Developer Wildlight Entertainment has confirmed that its online shooter game Highguard will shut down later this month.

In an announcement posted to X, the studio said that the game will permanently shut down on March 12, 2026. That's just 45 days after the game was first released on January 26, 2026.

"Since launch, more than two million players stepped into Highguard’s world. You shared feedback, created content, and many believed in what we were building," the post read.

"Despite the passion and hard work of our team, we have not been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long term."

The game will no longer be playable after that date, though the team did bizarrely confirm that there will be "one final game update" before then that will add a new playable Warden, a new weapon, skill trees, and more.

Developed over four years by a team that had veteran first-person shooter (FPS) developers who had worked on the likes of Apex Legends and Call of Duty, the Highguard shutdown comes amid a string of other high-profile live-service flops. Sony's Concord is one particularly notable example, a similar shooter game that launched back in August 2024 and was taken offline after just two weeks on the market.

Despite a strong initial player count, Highguard only had a few hundred PC players per day in recent weeks, according to data from SteamDB.

Reactions to the news are split, with some players mocking the announcement while others express sympathy for the developers (many of whom were recently laid off).

"What a waste of so much time, talent, and money," said one X user. "Genuinely feel so bad for the devs who work so hard on major AAA games and just get shafted."

"We are witnessing the era of two month lifespan shooters," joked another.

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