It’s been an usual couple of months for Wildlight Entertainment’s Highguard, mostly in part to the constant abuse the game has recieved for its lack of marketing since its The Game Awards announcement.
But now, we know why.
It was Meant to be a Shadowdrop
During a behind-the-scenes presentation with press and creators, Vice President of Product and Publishing Jason Torfin and Lead Designer Mohammed Alavi sat down with attendees of the event to answer questions.
As expected, one of the main questions was around the games marketing, or should we say lack thereof, and that’ss because the game was always intended to follow a similar release to Apex Legends; a shadowdrop. However, sometime in 2025, The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley put a spanner in the works because he was stoked for the game and wanted to reveal it.
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Speaking at the event (thanks XboxEra) on the original plans, Tofin said, “I think the fact that we’re independent and that we’re smart with how we run our business and build our team means that we have those luxuries. We’re not beholden to shareholders or any sort of other corporate shenanigans, and it allows us to have that sort of confidence. And from the get-go, you can’t bank on commercial success right out of the gate. If you do that, you’re probably going to fail most of the time.”
“And that’s why we were going to shadow drop.” he said “Let the game speak for itself. It was always the plan. And then, you know, Geoff came in the past year and he played the game. I mean, he really liked it and he was stoked. And we had an opportunity and we decided, okay, we can make a trailer that would be in our shadow-drop. And so the one we put there [at The Game Awards] was the one that would be the first thing you saw in the shadow-drop, followed by twenty-five minutes of other context. And unfortunately, that trailer wasn’t meant to be the thing to ‘educate’.”
So, there you have it. Highguard’s marketing wasn’t bad per se, it just changed on a whim and kind of shot themselves in the foot for a couple of months.
It explains why past rumours said that Highguard wasn’t a paid placement, despite it being the show’s last trailer (something traditionally reserved for the absolute best stuff). It simply was because Geoff Keighley liked it… Case closed!
Whether it means the game is good or not is another story… I guess only time will tell!
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Tom Henderson is Insider Gaming's Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief. When he's not running one of the industry's leading independent video game websites, he's probably playing an FPS like Call of Duty,…
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