The Daily Populous Wednesday February 18th, 2026 evening edition
Authored by respawnindex.com and submitted by Darth_Vaper883

Highguard is a tough spot since launch but things got worse when we found out the game’s official website is down after wave of layoffs. This mixed with the fact that the game’s player count is barely crossing 2000 gave fuel to speculations that Highguard is dead.

If you’re a fan of Highguard then rest assured, the game is not dead. On the official Highguard Discord, it was confirmed by a member of the development team that new content for the game is top priority.

So why is the website down? Well, in the same post it was explained that the website is being transferred and simplified. While it is good to know that new content is coming but will that content bring back players. At the time of this writing, Highguard had less then a thousand players online playing in the past 30 minutes.

The game’s main issue is the reputational damage caused by Geoff Keighley’s loud marketing campaign and then controversial statements by the development team blaming gamers Highguard’s failure.

The community sentiment around the game is mostly negative and a revival seems unlikely.

Djeheuty on February 18th, 2026 at 15:17 UTC »

Well, No Mans Sky was able to turn around their lackluster launch, but that was a highly hyped game that a lot of people pre-ordered or bought on launch. Highguard is F2P so it has no money to work off of from sales, kinda came out of nowhere with little advertising, and is in a genre that is already saturated, so I really doubt they're going to get a full year of content out unless they have it mostly done already.

Tnecniw on February 18th, 2026 at 12:40 UTC »

IF they somehow can turn this around, Hats off to them. but man, that does not seem likely to me.

Fudshy on February 18th, 2026 at 12:13 UTC »

It has less than a 1000 concurrent players on steam. Probably the same amount on the other platforms. Players are tired of these games for now. The studio will keep going with a skeleton crew for how long the funding lasts