Wildlight Leisure, the studio behind the lately launched multiplayer shooter Highguard, has been hit by layoffs. This comes simply over two weeks after the free-to-play recreation’s launch on January twenty sixth.
Former senior stage designer Alex Graner posted on LinkedIn, “Sadly, I used to be let go at present, together with many of the staff at Wildlight.” The variety of individuals laid off will not be instantly confirmed, however the studio’s LinkedIn web page lists the corporate as having between 51 and 200 workers.
Wildlight’s official X/Twitter account confirmed the layoffs in a press release, saying, “At the moment, we made the very tough resolution to half methods with many staff members whereas retaining a core group of builders who will proceed to innovate and help the sport.”
At BlueSky, Mat Piscatella of Circana (which tracks recreation gross sales and engagement) highlighted that “Whereas Highguard was within the prime 10 in weekly energetic customers on US Steam and within the prime 20 on each US PlayStation and Xbox (Circana Participant Engagement Tracker week ending 1/31/26),…” In keeping with SteamDB, Highguard reached a peak of 97,249 concurrent gamers on PC by way of Steam on its launch date and skilled a pointy decline. Two weeks after its launch, the variety of gamers was 4,524.
Graner additionally mentioned, “This actually hits residence as a result of there was a number of unreleased content material that I and others had designed for Excessive Guard that I used to be actually wanting ahead to.” Initially, there was a 3v3 aggressive mode, however gamers accepted the smaller measurement of the unique mode, so a 5v5 mode was carried out a number of days after launch. The staff revealed the content material roadmap on launch day. It packs updates into seven separate episodes with new objects, modes, and characters each month all year long. It is unclear at this level how the layoffs will have an effect on the studio’s plans, however Widllight has mentioned it is going to proceed to help the sport.
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