Highguard is another victim of the hero shooter genre. While it had a lot of promise, it failed to meet financial expectations and will be shutting off servers on March 12, as stated on their official X account.
This game has had a lot of tumbles along the way, and it started when it was first announced back at the Game Awards in 2025. While not looking like a bad game, people were baffled as to why this was shown last in the event. The words used were “generic” and “another hero shooter arena”.
It didn’t help that, leading up to its launch, the developers were silent. No news, no updates, until they just said that the game was coming out. Initial player count was impressive, but that can be attributed to the fact that people were curious and tried it on launch.
Sadly, a vast majority of those players left after getting a taste of what the game had to offer. With the lack of players and money coming in, the studio behind Highguard has declared the upcoming demise of the game. It’s even sadder since this game didn’t have some kind of major controversy behind it. It seems like it was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
However, with prominent hero shooter games like Marvel Rivalz and Overwatch, it seems tricky to break into this market. Even with the free-to-play model, it takes some time to turn that profit around. Highguard is just another cautionary tale in this field of live service hero shooters.
