It’s less than a week since Highguard launched, but discussions have been burning since its fateful reveal at The Game Awards last December. After rumors of host Geoff Keighley being responsible for it taking up the last spot, the revelation that this was true – and that the PvP raid shooter was meant to shadow drop – just thickens the plot further.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Wildlight Entertainment CEO Dusty Welch admitted that, “We didn’t do a great job with our trailer. We own that.” But was revealing it at The Game Awards the right decision?
“That’s an incredibly fair question, and it’s one I ask myself quite a bit. It’s one that I’m going to continue to ask myself for a period of time. If we are wildly successful, I will still ask myself that because I’m interested in the business side and how we communicate to players and press. And was that the right way? Was there a different way? Was there a better way? And I don’t know the answer to that yet today,” said Welch.
“The toxicity is challenging, and it’s debatable whether we would’ve had more or less or the same by doing the Game Awards. I don’t know, and we’ll never know the answer to that. But I think that that’s an angle that has to be considered going forward for anyone in game development.”
Following its launch last week, Highguard debuted to a not-at-all-bad 97,249 concurrent players on Steam. That number has since dropped significantly – the latest 24-hour peak hasn’t even broken 13,200 players. It also didn’t help that it received a “Mostly Negative” rating at launch for performance problems, server queues, bugs, and more.
Things have slightly improved, as Highguard now sits at a “Mixed” rating, but just barely, with 42 percent of the current reviews recommending it. The core gameplay has been heavily criticized (check out our review), with many complaining that the maps feel too large for 3v3 play and that gathering Vesper would be more enjoyable if there were PvE rather than mining.
While Wildlight has outlined a roadmap of content for the year, including new Wardens, bases, maps, and weapons, it suddenly dropped an experimental 5v5 playlist for the weekend. Perhaps it’ll become a staple if it proves popular enough.
