Highguard started life as a survival shooter, and Tencent pulled funding two weeks after launch, a new report claims
A new report into what went wrong with multiplayer shooter Highguard has revealed that Tencent allegedly pulled funding from the studio two weeks after the game's launch. This was what Wildlight reportedly told staff while laying off most of the 100-person team. Read more
---
Highguard started life as a survival shooter, and Tencent pulled funding two weeks after launch, a new report claims
Fewer than 20 people apparently remain at the studio.
[Image: A slight character with a blue and orange cape sits on a crenelation overlooking a sea and mountains beyond.]
Image credit: Wildlight
[Image: Robert Purchese avatar]
News
by Robert Purchese
Associate Editor
Published on Feb. 27, 2026
7 comments
A new report into what went wrong with multiplayer shooter Highguard has revealed that Tencent allegedly pulled funding from the studio two weeks after the game's launch. This was what Wildlight reportedly told staff while laying off most of the 100-person team.
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier wrote that on 11th February, slightly more than two weeks after the game's 26th January launch, staff were called to an all-hands meeting and told there would be layoffs. Management said Tencent had pulled funding, according to "people familiar with the events", and the general consensus was Highguard failed to meet whatever metrics Tencent had for it.
Wildlight publicly confirmed layoffs a day later but wouldn't specify numbers, and it insisted "a core group of developers" remained to work on the game. Bloomberg says fewer than 20 people remain at Wildlight today.
Tencent's role in Highguard's development was, curiously, kept quiet. It wasn't until several days after the layoffs that Game File confirmed Tencent's involvement. The reason for the secrecy around the company's involvement is unclear, given its foundational role in Wildlight. Had it not been for the "significant amount of funding" Wildlight reportedly received from Tencent, it likely wouldn't have been able to hire the team that made Highguard.
But what went wrong with Highguard? Bloomberg sketched a picture of development by talking to 10 former Wildlight employees. It's interesting to me that the game started as a survival-shooter, along the lines of Rust apparently, partly to avoid the crowded competitive shooter area it eventually ended up in. Two years of development went towards achieving this survival idea until Wildlight realised it wasn't working and pivoted.
This survival-shooter heritage is important because it resulted in some of the things we still see in the game now, such as the mining for Vesper currency, and even base raiding. These things were salvaged. Perhaps it's because of the muddled origins we're left with a game with an overly dense and complicated core. Highguard is a base-raiding game where you upgrade equipment and use siege weaponry and hero powers while also fighting other players, so it's a mash of a few different ideas. It's telling that much of this complexity is being swept aside by new game modes being added to the game now.
How did nobody notice this unfavourable complexity in the lead-up to launch? Highguard was apparently "extensively" tested, both internally and externally according to the Bloomberg report. But the conditions for testing were ideal. Internal testers already knew the game, so the complexity wasn't an issue, and controlled testing groups used voice comms, which is a subtle but meaningful difference to how casual players play.
The idea of open testing was raised, but Wildlight leadership apparently "nixed it". "They wanted to recreate what had worked with Apex Legends," Bloomberg wrote, "which had been kept secret until it was announced and launched at the same time."
Apex Legends' success cast a shadow over Highguard. Some of the team came from Respawn so were confident - the interviewed developers used the word "hubris" to describe Wildlight's mindset - that they could achieve success with Highguard. Even when negativity started to surround the game after The Game Awards announcement, Wildlight "encouraged" staff to secrecy because it believed the game would "speak for itself".
It seems fair to say Highguard's future is uncertain, despite Wildlight's scramble to introduce new modes and characters to jump-start the game. One such mode, an all-out Raid Rush mode, was added to Highguard today. But Highguard doesn't exist in a vacuum, and its continued struggle is surrounded by the high-profile debut of competitive shooter Marathon, as well as a resurgent Overwatch. Amongst that, it's hard, bearing in mind the size of the team still working on Highguard, to see where a revival or comeback will come from.
Love Eurogamer.net? Make us a Preferred Source on Google and catch more of our coverage in your feeds.
---
[Original source](https://www.eurogamer.net/tencent-pulled-highguards-funding-two-weeks-after-launch)