<\/p>\n
Highguard<\/em> is shutting down in less than two weeks and it just got its biggest update ever. It includes the hero shooter\u2019s 10th character, a new weapon, and an entire skill tree. Creative director Jason McCord said the update was pushed out by Wildlight Entertainment\u2019s remaining \u201cskeleton crew\u201d and that they wanted to release the new content even if it \u201conly gets played by a few thousand people.\u201d The update arrives after game director and studio head Chad Grenier pushed back against conspiracy theories blaming the game\u2019s failure on toxic positivity.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is our final update and it\u2019s big,\u201d he posted on X on March 4. \u201cProps to the skeleton crew at Wildlight for wanting to finish it and ship it to our remaining players, even if it only gets played by a few thousand people. They weren\u2019t asked to. They asked if they could finish it up and get it out there.\u201d<\/p>\n The update\u2019s biggest change is an XP system for leveling up and a skill tree that lets players upgrade their characters around certain strategies. The four subclasses are Raider (attacking), Harvester (resources), Treasure Hunter (loot), and Protector (defense). The perks in each of those areas can be mixed and matched to create unique hero builds. The update also adds Koldo, a tank character trapped in a suit of armor, and the Switchback marksman rifle.<\/p>\n Why wait to add all this stuff? McCord said it just wasn\u2019t ready yet. \u201cNone of this was done at launch,\u201d he wrote on Wednesday. \u201cEspecially the Skill Trees. The team crunched the last few weeks to get it done. Some stuff (Koldo, Switchback) was partially done, scheduled for future seasons. The team picked the stuff that was closest to completion and finished it up.\u201d<\/p>\n Highguard<\/em>\u2018s final update arrives just eight days before the game\u2019s servers go offline forever. The shutdown comes less than two months after the hero shooter from Apex Legends<\/em> and Titanfall<\/em> veterans launched. Despite players preemptively calling it a \u201cConcord<\/em> 2.0\u201d following a poor reveal trailer at the 2026 Game Awards, the free-to-play game netted nearly 100,000 concurrent players on PC during its first 24 hours.<\/p>\n But most of those players, goosed by a flood of early negative Steam reviews from people with little time spent playing the game, didn\u2019t stick around. Just weeks later Wildlight Entertainment laid off most of the staff after Tencent reportedly yanked funding following missed launch goals. Only around 20 developers remained as new modes were introduced to try to give Highguard<\/em> one last push. Its unexpected and premature shutdown was announced earlier this week. The game lasted 31 days longer than Concord<\/em>.<\/p>\n Like that game, Highguard<\/em> became the target of an anti-live-service and anti-woke backlash online which, even if it wasn\u2019t responsible for the game\u2019s ultimate failure, made the vibes surrounding the game stink to high heaven. \u201cThat\u2019s not actually what happened,\u201d Grenier wrote in response to claims that Highguard<\/em> was the victim of developers being unwilling to criticize one another\u2019s work. \u201cWe were very critical towards the project and each other. The team was encouraged and constantly spoke their mind. We always tried to put game and players first. We always tried to put players first. The team was very critical.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cAt the end of the day, we just made a few mistakes, and made a game that didn\u2019t resonate like our past games did. Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t matter though and nobody will know the true story of the studio or game, and the rumors and speculation will be what\u2019s out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Highguard is shutting down in less than two weeks and it just got its biggest update ever. It includes the hero shooter\u2019s 10th character, a new weapon, and an entire skill tree. Creative director Jason McCord said the update was pushed out by Wildlight Entertainment\u2019s remaining \u201cskeleton crew\u201d and that they wanted to release the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5248,5249,3343,5251,5250,5247,1071],"class_list":{"0":"post-5306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news","8":"tag-crew","9":"tag-crunches","10":"tag-highguard","11":"tag-pileon","12":"tag-ship","13":"tag-skeleton","14":"tag-update"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Out of money and out of time<\/h2>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not actually what happened\u201d<\/h2>\n