The music didn't play for long: Highguard will soon be shut down

When former Respawn Entertainment employees decided to found their studio Wildlight to create online shooters their own way, they had grand plans and were brimming with creative enthusiasm. But strange things began to happen with their project — suffice it to say about a release without prior testing, but with a laudatory ode from The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley. As a result, the novelty gathered negative reviews from gamers and lasted less than two months in total. Now Highguard is planned to be shut down, but that's not all the oddities surrounding the young team's failed debut.

The biggest mystery was the behavior of the game's developers. On the one hand, they actively support it: they recently released an update, and in addition, they promise to present a hero, levels, a progression branch, weapons, and several pieces of equipment. On the other hand, despite the announced patch, representatives of Wildlight Entertainment state that the servers of their multiplayer shooter will be permanently shut down on March 12. «Permanently» — that word is from the official statement. During its short existence, the game was launched by more than two million people. However, according to the authors themselves, they failed to create a stable user base.

Gamers did not take Keighley's word for it and did not appreciate innovations such as the use of mounts in a first-person shooter. The concept of raids with base development also did not find a response in the hearts of the public, but most importantly — these were the technical problems that discouraged buyers right on the day of release: due to an error, genre fans could not even complete the tutorial mission. Fortunately or not, in a few days all these oddities will remain only in memories.