For the reason that tumultuous reveal of Highguard throughout 2025’s The Recreation Awards, there’s been a query as to the place the funding for the sport’s studio, Wildlight Leisure, got here from. A number of new reviews level to Tencent being among the many backers.
Based on The Game Business and Game File, Chinese language web behemoth Tencent funded Wildlight, a minimum of partially, by means of the corporate’s TiMi division.
Wildlight described itself as a “fully-funded” studio on its web site, however the staff by no means defined what that meant or the place its funding got here from. On January 27, GameSpot requested the Highguard staff if it may share any additional details about funding sources, however the firm by no means replied. Within the wake of the reporting that Tencent funded Wildlight, a spokesperson for Wildlight advised GameSpot on February 17 that it had no additional data to share.
As of the publishing of this text, it’s unclear as as to if Tencent’s connection to Wildlight had any bearing on the layoffs that hit the studio mere weeks after Highguard’s launch.
Clearly, a connection does not essentially imply there’s any correlation. Simply because Tencent put some huge cash into Wildlight, it does not essentially imply Tencent has any sway on the Wildlight staff. Tencent, in any case, has investments huge and small in quite a few online game corporations.
“Traditionally, Tencent has been a daily investor in new groups,” The Recreation Enterprise editor-in-chief and co-founder Christopher Dring posted online. “You would be shocked at what number of different devs have ‘secret’ (however not really secret) Tencent backing.”
Because it has come to gentle that Tencent reportedly funded Wildlight, folks have identified that Tencent’s Steven Ma is on the advisory board for The Game Awards alongside the likes of Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, AMD CEO Lisa Chu, EA president Laura Miele, and lots of others. Ma being on the board does not essentially imply a lot of something. The Recreation Awards host and organizer Geoff Keighley championed Highguard and even gave Wildlight the ultimate slot of the night at no cost, when he was charging as a lot as $1 million for different spots–this has raised some eyebrows.
Wildlight had beforehand laid out a 12 months’s price of post-launch content material for Highguard. The layoffs at Wildlight lower the staff all the way down to a “core” group, so it stays to be seen if the promised content material is coming.
Regardless, Highguard has had a tough go at it–and by extension, the Wildlight staff has been put by means of the ringer in 2026. The sport’s reveal at The Recreation Awards was not well-received on-line, disrupting staff morale at Wildlight going into the brand new 12 months.
When Highguard did lastly launch in January 2026, it was met by largely middling evaluations from critics. In GameSpot’s Highguard evaluate, Stella Chung wrote, “In its present state, Highguard is an aggressively okay sport that wants quite a lot of work.”
Within the weeks that adopted these evaluations, layoffs at Wildlight led to an additional downturn in staff morale for these nonetheless left on the studio. Then the official Highguard web site went down, and as of publishing this text, it has not come again. One wonders if Highguard is lengthy for this world, or if it’s going to go the way in which of so many different live-service video games earlier than it.
A laid-off Wildlight developer wrote an impassioned weblog put up that ran by means of the scenario surrounding Highguard pre- and post-release, saying “the longer term appeared shiny” till Highguard was proven at The Recreation Awards. The developer later deactivated their account.