Highguard is having a bit of a rough time at the moment, despite many, like myself, actually enjoying the foundations developer Wildlight Entertainment has delivered. There are obvious flaws that are undeniable, but there is also plenty of potential for a truly excellent game on offer here. It is a shame then that Highguard may not get the opportunity to show off its strengths, both in part due to said negativity, but also its unfortunate release strategy that saw blunder after blunder result in vitriol online.
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However, there is one move Wildlight Entertainment could make to both ensure Highguard survives and deliver it in a far better state than it is currently in. That solution is to copy 2019’s rags-to-riches success story, Splitgate, a game that once proved divisive before garnering a big enough fanbase and money to warrant a sequel. Should Highguard follow some crucially important steps, we could see it live on for many years to come and offer a potentially groundbreaking hero shooter experience unlike anything else.
Highguard Must Copy Splitgate In Order To Survive
I’m a firm believer that Highguard doesn’t deserve the hate it has received both since it was first announced at the 2025 Game Awards and its launch in January 2026. The foundations for something excellent are there, and no multiplayer game should be written off based on its initial launch, especially one designed to be evolved. However, it is undeniably fair to say that the state Highguard is currently in is significantly less enjoyable than what its premise and developers promise, and that is a genuine shame.
That is why it needs to copy the strategy used to turn Splitgate, the Portal-inspired Halo-killer from 2019, into a massive success. That game launched into early access to little fanfare and barely managed to scrape enough players together to warrant any form of attention. However, after relaunching itself in the game’s 2021 console beta, it saw a flood of new players, so many, in fact, that the developers struggled to keep the servers from crashing.
It was an unmitigated success brought about by fundamental and crucial changes that improved the game’s core gameplay loop dramatically. Splitgate went from being a fairly simplistic shooter with a unique twist to being an approachable yet complex competitive multiplayer experience everyone wanted to try. Of course, it also had its own fair share of issues, including the failed relaunch of Splitgate 2. However, that initial strategy’s success is something Highguard can easily replicate, and, indeed, may need to copy if it wants to survive.
More Games Need To Change Their Release Strategy
Rather than revealing the game at The Game Awards and then ostensibly shadow dropping two weeks later, Highguard should have taken a quieter, more nuanced approach to its release strategy. Instead, much like Valve’s Deadlock, a game that has barely been mentioned by the developer but continues to maintain a healthy fanbase through frequent betas and updates, Highguard should have released into some form of beta, drawn in a small but dedicated fanbase willing to support its continued development, and then launched fully when its core gameplay loop was solved.
The current state of Highguard feels much like Splitgate did back in 2019. Both games share a lot of similarities in that they’re both striving to innovate in a saturated market and succeeding in many ways, but failing in too many for it to count. While the Deadlock approach is lost to Highguard, pulling the game and relaunching it in early access or beta form via Steam would help it considerably to reset expectations and give it the space and time to refocus the team’s efforts on fixing the main loop.
Ultimately, the criticisms levied at Highguard come from a place of high expectation. If you’ve got a spot at TGA and launch into 1.0 out of the gate with gameplay that feels better suited to an early access launch, you’re bound to be criticized. Highguard needs to regain the respect and trust of the wider gaming community for it to succeed the way Wildlight Entertainment and fans like myself want it to. Taking the Splitgate approach, genuinely taking the time to gather player feedback and rework key gameplay systems, and then relaunching when it is ready, is the only way for Highguard to survive.
Muddling through a rough launch in the hopes people will stick around while bigger and better hero shooters release around it feels like a mistake. Highguard needs a major update to fix everything, but that’ll take time. Why not spend that time in a space away from all the vitriol and hate, one filled with fans who actively want to support the game and understand the state that it is on a platform fundamentally designed to accommodate early access releases? It remains to be seen the road Wildlight Entertainment will take, but frankly, I’d jump through the portal that brought Splitgate so much success, instead of taking the path that brought Concord crashing down.
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