Another game falls to the Chopping Block

 

Sadly like so many other games recently in the ever increasing body count of games that are lost to the sands of time before they even have a chance to flourish another one is now laid down to rest. Highguard a game that was announced in December came out on Steam on Jan 26th, 2026 and is done having its servers shut down on March 12th. 

Highguard stated that it was a, "Highguard is a PvP raid shooter where players will ride, fight, and raid as Wardens, arcane gunslingers sent to fight for control of a mythical continent." which combined a fantasy world with technology and magic and pitted two teams against one another. In a phase based system of sorts, it allowed a team of players to choose a base type, reinforce it with traps and upgrades, then head out into the world on mounts to get resources and find the other teams base. The next phase was about finding a relic that could unlock 'Siege' like weapons used to counter the shielding of the enemy base. That led to a phase which involved planting a bomb in the enemy base and getting it to detonate.

The graphics where well done, the music was said to be nice, and the concept wasn't bad either. However, many players felt that the characters where not fleshed out well, the weapons were poorly designed, and the armor wasn't done well either. It said that on the day of launch it may of had around 100k people on playing, but soon after it's numbers fell to where only around 3k to 4k players played concurrent on the server and there were issues with the matchmaking.

What also hurt the game was the fact that soon after its launch, several of its dev team was laid off from the company meaning it had already loss staffing that could have been used to increase the games outlook. This sadly has been a growing trend in the gaming market and one that is proving that most gaming companies are out of touch with the masses of gamers out there.

Another thing I believe hurt the game is the lack of visibility. I honestly had never heard of the game until I seen it on a news article which prompted me to write this post. It is sad to think that a game could have went somewhere had the company that made it put time into posting more about it and sending out some sort of media coverage. Sadly however they did not.

There has been a growing list of games that sadly do not last too long due to either not enough players, bad press, lack of interest, lack of concept, or the company doesn't make the money it thinks it should and then it drops the devs. It is a trend that is getting worse and worse as time goes by and while this is a bad thing, it is allowing Indy Gaming companies and groups to bring about changes and games that resonate with gamers everywhere.