Highguard: What does success look like?

Despite already having the reputation of ‘just another hero shooter’, Highguard has been a talking point since its announcement at the end of 2025. Turnover for the game’s release has been rapid, launching just over a month later, and we can finally see what all the fuss is about.

In many ways, Highguard has shown shades of unsuccessful hero shooters of the past, and with all the competition, it’s an incredibly difficult genre to get a foothold in. So, after all the drama surrounding the game, the question arises of whether Highguard can be a success, and what success would even realistically look like.

It’s easy to just call Highguard another hero shooter, but it is attempting to do things differently from other games in the genre. It is 3v3, rather than the typical 5v5 or 6v6 format, featuring a mix of gunplay and magic. The scale of the game’s map is another unique feature, allowing players to use mounts to travel across a large, open area with giant siege towers to attack.

A main part of the Highguard’s marketing is that the studio behind it, Wildlight Entertainment, was founded by veterans of Respawn Entertainment. These veterans were part of Apex Legends’ development, a wildly successful hero shooter that Wildlight seems to want to replicate.  

While many have been dismissive of Highguard, it became a controversial title the moment it was announced. The timing of the Highguard Game Awards reveal trailer was a major factor in this.

The 2025 Game Awards was a showcase of unique, creative excellence, with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 breaking records for the number of awards won. It was also a demonstration of how this was lacking in the competitive multiplayer scene, since single-player games dominated the awards and all the best announcements.

While there were plenty of massive titles to be announced, Larian’s Divinity was the biggest of the bunch. After the astounding success of Baldur’s Gate 3, whatever Larian made next would be huge, yet this was not the title that closed the show. Highguard was the big announcement that Geoff Keighley kept up his sleeve, but it fell flat immediately.

Comparisons to the monumental failure that was Concord were made on the night. It was a controversial decision, so much so that, even though Highguard’s marketing remained quiet after the trailer dropped, the online buzz was palpable.

Keighley has continued his work as a one-man marketing machine for Highguard on X, which has likely contributed to the online buzz and controversy in equal measure.

With the game now out, plenty have gone to voice their opinion, and it hasn’t been pretty viewing. After less than 24 hours post-release (as of writing), there have been over 14,000 reviews on the Highguard Steam page, and the game sits at Mostly Negative reviews, with only 32% giving a thumbs up.

These reviews echo some similar messages:

Some have stated that they have found the game fun, and the gunplay has rarely been a complaint, although it hasn’t been all that praised either. It feels like the game’s scope is smaller than the online buzz and attention it received.

Highguard started very strong with its player numbers, according to SteamDB. It managed a peak of 97,249 within the first couple of hours, but around 12 hours after that peak, the game had around 8,000 players, showing a 90% decrease.

Given that Highguard is a free, live-service title, it needs players to stick around, and how the player count will look in its first month will be vital. Obviously, it needs to do better than the title it has often been compared to, Concord, which was famously dead on release, but that should be seen as the bare minimum.

Success would also mean trying to be a part of the 2026 esports scene in some capacity. Esports games can often take some time to properly cultivate, but Highguard will need to gain and keep a sizable audience to have a shot at making an impact, competitively. This won’t be easy, considering all the competition in the hero shooter genre, and it won’t be made any easier in future with Valve’s Deadlock being the closest thing to a guaranteed success.

It isn’t realistic to expect Highguard to compete with the likes of Overwatch 2, Marvel Rivals, Apex Legends, VALORANT, and so on, at least not any time soon. Still, this first month will be telling, and if it can keep its head above the 10,000 players for a daily peak, while listening to player feedback, it could carve out its own niche in the genre.

From the looks of largely negative reviews, it will be a project that Wildlight will have to keep shaping post-launch, if it truly believes in it. It is unlikely that Highguard will be the genre-defining title that Geoff Keighley has continually insisted it deserves to be, given its rocky start, but it is far from the monumental failure that Concord was.

While the Game Awards Highguard trailer got the word out about the game, it also created a buzz that has thus far hurt more than helped. Highguard has the beginnings of a playerbase, if its Steam numbers are anything to go by, but maintaining it will be tough amid a negative review storm.

This won’t be an easy task for Wildlight Entertainment, and it will need to make significant improvements to the game to keep it going after a turbulent launch. It’s difficult to see Highguard being held in the same regard as something like Apex Legends, although it isn’t another Concord, which couldn’t even get 1,000 players at its peak. 

Highguard doesn’t look like it will be the next big thing in the genre, but with a difficult road ahead, it has a chance to carve out its own niche, however unlikely.