Chad Grenier, the studio head at Wildlight Leisure and director of the free-to-play raid shooter Highguard, has mentioned it “does not matter” how many individuals play the sport.
Speaking to Polygon, Grenier mentioned, “Whether or not it will get a thousand individuals or 100 million individuals, it does not matter. What issues most is that the sport is cherished by the individuals who performed it.”
He added that his hope is that Highguard turns into a sport that “individuals love and turns into a part of them.”
Highguard launched in late January and reached practically 100,000 peak concurrent gamers on Steam. Nevertheless, the Steam numbers have dropped sharply since then. These numbers don’t inform the entire story, although, as Highguard can be out there on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Sequence X|S.
Earlier than this, lead designer Mohammad Alavi mentioned Wildlight was targeted on discovering a core, passionate group, after which attempting to develop from there. Alavi mentioned, “We do not want [player counts] to be tremendous large in an effort to achieve success.”
Additionally within the interview, Wildlight’s Dusty Welch mentioned the crew thought of making Highguard a paid sport versus free. Nevertheless, it “simply did not slot in with the place we needed to go as an organization,” he mentioned.
Welch didn’t cite any examples, however one paid sport that’s having fun with vital success is the $40 sport Arc Raiders, which simply handed 11 weeks in a row because the No. 1 most-played sport on Steam. It nonetheless has hundreds of thousands of daily players and has offered greater than 12 million models.
Highguard was developed by individuals who beforehand labored on Name of Obligation, Apex Legends, and Titanfall. Nevertheless, the sport’s Steam web page scrubbed point out of Apex Legends and Titanfall after the sport launched.
Not lengthy after launch, Wildlight launched a significant replace for Highguard that added the 5v5 mode that gamers had been asking for. Gamers can look ahead to many extra updates to come back, as Wildlight has mentioned the tempo of updates for Highguard will probably be quicker than Apex Legends. The studio has already printed a 2026 DLC roadmap for Highguard that features extra maps, characters, and weapons.