Tencent Pulls Funding for Highguard, Leaving Wildlight Studio With Fewer Than 20 Developers — Reports

Speculation is mounting that the developers will soon announce the permanent decommissioning of the shooter’s servers.

At its launch, Highguard achieved respectable concurrent player numbers on Steam, yet it ultimately failed to sustain its audience. User retention plummeted as the project faced a wave of negative critiques and underwhelming revenue from microtransactions. Despite the studio’s initial confidence in its financial runway to polish the game, the primary investor, Tencent, abruptly withdrew its support. This sudden loss of funding resulted in the termination of the majority of the workforce, which previously numbered around 100 staff members.

According to Bloomberg, the project is currently being maintained by a skeleton crew of fewer than twenty developers. This remaining team recently reached out to the community to confirm that a new patch is in the works, seeking to dispel rumors of an immediate shutdown triggered by a technical glitch on the game’s official website.

Source: iXBT.games