Wildlight Entertainment’s video game Highguard has launched to 97,249 peak concurrent players, with its 24-hour peak currently noted at 38,726. It’s a relatively solid achievement for the newly-released shooter, given it’s an all-original property – but it does appear the reaction has been largely negative so far.
Highguard launch – quick links
Highguard and the challenges of being known
Highguard is perhaps subject to a higher degree of scrutiny from players thanks to its recent appearance at The Game Awards 2025. It appeared as the ‘one more thing’ final announcement during the show, closing out a relatively lukewarm few hours of game reveals.
Typically, The Game Awards reserves this final trailer slot for a major video game – a new project from a well-known developer, a major sequel, an adaptation of a well-loved property, or something else guaranteed to turn heads.
The 2025 show featured Highguard last, and the trailer was introduced with plenty of bombast by host, Geoff Keighley. After a speech full of excitement and hype, the first trailer aired, and was immediately ridiculed by watchers who felt it was a lacklustre final reveal.
Read: Highguard is finally here – but can it recover from its rocky marketing reveal?
While there were elements that excited, like the game’s combination of gunplay, magic and horse riding, fatigue around hero shooters – and a seeming resentment of this game being in the final slot – meant Highguard debuted without much enthusiasm.
The reality is the multiplayer shooter genre is currently packed with established games from more experienced studios, with years of content, and gameplay refined over plenty of time.
Other recent games attempting to grab attention in the genre, like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Concord, have failed spectacularly. Given that, there were plenty of folks expecting – and in some cases, rallying for – Highguard to join them in failure.
Steam reviews criticise Highguard’s map design, characters and art direction
While some of the criticism currently contributing to Highguard‘s Mostly Negative score on Steam can be considered review bombing, with low-quality, meme-like, or obtuse feedback delivered in comments, there is also legitimate criticism among the responses.
One of the top-rated comments is a measured criticism that details issues with the game’s map – ‘the map is the size of Latvia but you only have three players, so most of your time is spent running around the map looking for something to kill’ – as well as bland character design.
Another comments that the game’s ideas are cool, and it looks good, but it does feel like there’s a lack of coherence in the design and intentionality. There’s also criticism around the game’s audio, and the lack of interesting lore to support its main mechanics.
That said, there are some positives in the bunch, too. Players have praised Highguard‘s combat and gunplay, noting it feels fairly refined at launch. The potential to build teamwork has also been praised, as has its fun as a multiplayer shooter.
While the negatives still outweigh the positives, it does appear Highguard has enough in the way of compelling ideas for players to stick around, for now.
Losing one-third of its initial player base in the first week of launch isn’t particularly promising, but with a solid enough group of players still diving in for sessions, there’s hope Highguard can turn the tide, address the criticism it’s currently facing, and perhaps emerge as a bright-eyed contender in the PvP shooter space. As with all things, only time will tell.
