It was always going to be tough for Highguard to succeed after the anticlimactic reveal it experienced during December’s The Game Awards ceremony. Many millions of viewers sat through hours of trailers and speeches to see what the ‘final reveal’ would be, and then Highguard graced screens worldwide, falling somewhat flat and leaving gamers disappointed.
Highguard is a new PvP shooter from former Apex Legends and Titanfall developers, and it’s set to drop in just three weeks. Aside from the prestigious trailer spot at The Game Awards, almost nothing has been shown, revealed, or discussed regarding the game that many have dubbed ‘Concord 2’.
Is Highguard going to be dead on arrival? The consensus isn’t looking good.
Highguard Has Already Drawn Negative Impressions
Highguard took up the most anticipated trailer spot at The Game Awards, but it might have blown back on Wildlight, the game’s developer. It has already been labelled DOA by many owing to an almost complete lack of marketing, a slew of negative first impressions, and a mishandled reveal that didn’t inspire much confidence.
It was unexpected, but ultimately it’s just another live-service hero shooter that was too quickly compared to titles like VALORANT, Overwatch, and yes, Concord, the ill-fated PlayStation shooter that was so bad it killed an entire studio.
Many were left bewildered by the cacophonic trailer that didn’t explain much. It was a visual showcase, revealing players scooting across maps on the backs of horses and bears while wielding swords, magic, and assault rifles, all in a bid to resolve classic first-person shooter arena modes set in destructible maps.
There’s so much going on there, it’s unreal.
That’s one of the first failures of Highguard – it’s trying to be so unique while taking inspiration from many other games, that it has spawned with a twisted, hard-to-place identity that gets lost in the complexity of it all.
Track Record
The hero shooter and live-service FPS space is overcrowded and bursting at the seams with recent failures. Players are arguably fatigued by now, and Highguard’s reveal just failed to convince them that it brings anything new to the table, despite Geoff Keighley’s attempt to hype the game up at The Game Awards.
Right now, the most glaring red flag is the radio silence and lack of marketing for Highguard. It’s coming out in just three weeks and has no major marketing beats, no influencer previews or campaigns lined up, and absolutely no social media momentum.
On Steam, the game boasts just 7,460 followers at the time of writing, which is a pinprick in the userbase compared to other, similar titles. It echoes Concord, which only had a few thousand before it launched in August 2024.
Even a cursory glance at Highguard on search engine trend platforms reveals nobody is curious about the title.
The official channel uploaded the game’s inaugural trailer on December 12, and it has garnered just 90,000 views at the time of writing. It has an overwhelmingly negative like-to-dislike ratio (89% disliked). IGN managed to get 400,000 views on the same trailer, but that came with a 92% count of dislikes and an alarming number of negative comments:
- ‘ChatGPT, generate a hero shooter with fantasy elements.’
- ‘This was outdated when the developer first imagined it.’
- ‘Oh God, I thought people were joking. It actually does look like Concord.’
The game’s fan-created subreddit has just 113 members, and on there, most of the posts concern questions about the lack of updates from the developers. One user wrote, ‘Either the devs are stupid, or this game is getting delayed.’
It might boil down to the backlash being more emotional than anything else, as many have written the game off without a) seeing raw gameplay, and b) without trying it out for a single second. Perception is reality in gaming, but the community is firmly unconvinced, and that might drive prospective users away without giving this free-to-play shooter even a first glance.
Unless Wildlight Entertainment pulls off a rapid and aggressive marketing campaign to compel users to invest, the narrative of Highguard being dead on arrival might be a prophetic one.
Let’s just hope they didn’t spend too much on The Game Awards ad spot.
Do you think Highguard will be dead on arrival? Let us know what you’re thinking on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that The Witcher 3’s new DLC could drop in May
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
I’m excited to try it the game. It’s free and there’s nothing to lose. I hope it gets an honest shot and didn’t get review bombed for no reason. Seems like everyone is just jumping on hate train just because it’s thats the trend.