Self-described PvP raid shooter Highguard is finally out, several weeks after a show-ending reveal at The Game Awards which sparked a mix of confusion, disappointment, and cautious optimism. Dusty Welch, CEO and cofounder of developer Wildlight Entertainment, admits the whole thing could have gone better – and it turns out Highguard was originally planning on a full Apex Legends-style shadow drop to begin with.
"Look, I wish Highguard had been received better. I wish the feedback had been better," Welch tells PC Gamer. "Part of that's on us, right? We didn't put our heads in the sand. We, as a team, saw the feedback. We're gamers ourselves. We're online ourselves reading the feedback. I think, ultimately, we could have made a different trailer – a better trailer that wasn't about entertaining, which is what we think [The Game Awards] was about."
Fellow Wildlight cofounder Chad Grenier tells Kotaku that this Game Awards trailer was "rushed" together after an offer from show host Geoff Keighley.
"We’ve known Geoff for a long time, and he said, ‘let me do something,’ that’s maybe a little risky in hindsight – but different, [to] take a free to play PvP Raid Shooter and do something with it," Grenier says.
Before this, throughout Highguard's four years of development, the launch plan was always a true shadow drop: reveal and release, bam. "We were gonna do a shadowdrop, you know, since day one, almost since forming this company; we did it with Apex and it worked well," Grenier adds.
Welch also commented on the game's TGA showing, and Keighley's offer: "Geoff's a friend of the studio. He came in and he played the game a couple of times, and he loved it. So when he said, 'Look, I'd love to do something different and put an indie studio and a free-to-play game up here and put it in the show,' I mean, as an indie who was unknown by choice, who wouldn't jump at the chance to do that? Here's the biggest platform [in gaming], right?"
This reveal didn't have the desired effect, and Wildlight's total silence in the aftermath – only broken today by a launch showcase that began as the game was released – allowed doubts to fester. But this quiet period was also part of the plan, design and creative director James McCord tells PC Gamer, and the team's perspective remains unchanged: "The key is, you've got to play the game."
Highguard's prospects remain unclear, but it certainly hasn't gone the way of Concord with a total failure to launch. At the time of writing, SteamDB shows Highguard has peaked at over 84,000 players – a number that continued to rise as I wrote this article. Its Twitch category is currently sitting at 363,000 viewers.
The game is free-to-play and out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. A new "Episode" of content, adding a new playable hero, a fourth mount type, and ranked mode is coming in two weeks.
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