Sony is issuing automatic refunds to players who paid for additional content in Highguard.
Highguard launched on January 26 after almost no communication with prospective players between its December The Game Awards announcement and its release date. While Steam concurrents almost hit 100,000, they soon plummeted. And though developer Wildlight was quick to address issues with the game, even adding a 5v5 game mode to counter 3v3 complaints, it wasn’t long before most of the studio was laid off. Wildlight went on to announce that it would permanently shut down Highguard on March 12, but not before a “farewell tour” patch.
Now, as spotted by players and shared on Reddit, refunds seem to have been issued automatically, with one refunded fan writing: “I honestly didn’t care for a refund. I enjoyed the game and enjoyed supporting it, but if you were looking for a refund, they are sending them out.”
So far, it seems that Sony is preemptively returning players’ money — commenters in the same thread claim to have not yet heard from Steam or Xbox. If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it is, with Highguard following a similar trajectory to disastrous live service hero shooter Concord, which has gone down as one of the biggest flops in PlayStation history. Amid disastrously low player numbers, Sony pulled Concord offline just two weeks after launch, with one estimate suggesting it sold just 25,000 copies. Its developer, Firewalk Studios, closed shortly thereafter.
Earlier this month, former Wildlight developer and level designer Alex Graner told the Quad Damage Podcast that throughout development, Wildlight “really leaned into the competitive side of it, and that was always one of my biggest fears as a player.”
“I can only speak to my side of it as a level designer, but when I joined [Wildlight], it was trying to figure out this new, ambitious game, and this team is always pushing the boundaries,” Graner said. “You don’t strive to create something that doesn’t work out, but it happens, unfortunately. Throughout development, we really leaned into the competitive side of it, and that was always one of my biggest fears as a player.
“3v3 duos is always the sweatiest version of anything like battle royale, objective modes, wingman, you know it, you name it. It requires such a high intensity of communication with your team, and team play, that it doesn’t leave much room for casualness. I think that was the biggest thing that turned a lot of players off Highguard,” he added.
The issue, Graner believes, is that Highguard had “all these different rules and stages,” which made it difficult for players who don’t already have a team to play with, and particularly challenging for new players.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, you want to loot, now we’ve got to chase this objective, now we have to plant this objective, now it’s overtime… It has all these rules, which I think works at a really high level, but when players are first coming in it’s a lot to grasp,” Graner explained. “On top of all that, because it was 3v3, that kind of game just requires high-skill movement and shooting, which is already a pretty high [bar to] entry as well. So if you just have a few bad games or your teammates aren’t sticking together, you’re just going to get rolled, and it’s very hard to 1v2 in our game.
“It’s all designed to be a team-based shooter. I think that was the biggest thing. People just kind of turned it off because they didn’t have the team.”
Another former Highguard developer also recently spoke out about the disastrous announcement and launch, saying the game, and by extension its team, “turned into a joke from minute one, largely due to false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement.” We recently learned that Highguard was financially backed by Tencent, which reportedly pulled funding just a couple of weeks after it launched. Meanwhile, it looks like Wildlight is no more. Its website is offline and its LinkedIn page is unavailable.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
