With Highguard‘s servers having been officially shut down as of earlier this month, players that spent money on its in-game purchases have been left in the lurch. However, it looks like PS5 players might see some good fortune, since many players on Sony’s platform have reported that they have been getting refunded for any Highguard purchases they may have made. Among this is BlueSky user Kashmoe, who revealed a screenshot of Sony having refunded them for the $16.19 to get 1,600 Highguard Gold.
Similarly, Polish BlueSky user Cal has also reported getting a refund from PlayStation without any request submitted by the user. “It looks like Sony is issuing refunds for Highguard microtransactions on its own initiative,” they wrote (via machine translation). “I didn’t submit any requests or anything, but 59 PLN landed in my account today. Pretty nice of them!”
Further adding to this, ResetEra user RedBullCola has also claimed to have gotten a complete refund for any purchases they had made in Highguard. They have also noted that neither Steam nor Microsoft have made any similar moves, at least for now. It is currently unclear if this is a move by Highguard developer Wildlight Entertainment, or whether Sony is footing the bill by itself.
Wildlight Entertainment had announced that it was shutting down Highguard‘s servers back on March 4th, with shut down happening on March 12th. In the meantime, the studio had continued to work on releasing the final major update for the PvP raid shooter, which was released just a day after the initial announcement. This update brought in major features to the title, including a brand new skill tree and account-wide progression system.
“Since launch, more than two million players stepped into Highguard‘s world,” wrote the studio on social media. “You shared feedback, created content, and many believed in what we were building. For that, we are deeply grateful.”
“Despite the passion and hard work of our team, we have not been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long term. Servers will remain online until March 12. We hope you’ll jump in with us one more time to show your support and get those final great matches in while we still can.”
Leading up to its eventual shut down, several reports development of Highguard had started popping up. Among these was one that noted that the leadership at Wildlight Entertainment had decided to nix any idea of external playtests in the studio’s attempts to capture the lightning that its employees had seen with Apex Legends and its shadow drop when they were still at Respawn Entertainment.
However, while there may have been plenty of issues surrounding Highguard‘s development, the studio was still ultimately described as being “a healthy, collaborative, transparent” one, with unnamed employees saying that they loved working there.
Other reports have indicated that, despite Wildlight Entertainment’s claims of being completely independent, the studio was secretly getting funding from Tencent’s TiMi Studio Group, with the company being described as “the undisclosed lead financial backer” behind the game.
