Highguard Reportedly Failed Due to Arrogance, Studio Leaders Believed They Had Created a New Apex Legends
Highguard appeared suddenly and disappeared just as quickly. The online shooter was announced in December 2025 and released in January 2026. However, by February, most of the development team had already been laid off. Although the game is still technically active, its future looks uncertain.
What happened behind the scenes that led to such a rapid decline?
Bloomberg Report Points to Leadership Decisions
According to a new Bloomberg report written by well-known journalist Jason Schreier, the failure of Highguard can be linked to several factors. However, sources mainly point to arrogance among the studio’s leadership.
Ten people who spoke with Schreier said that the leadership team repeatedly refused to show the game to the public before launch to gather feedback and improve it. The studio heads, many of whom were former Respawn Entertainment veterans, believed they had created something on the level of Apex Legends, the popular shooter from their previous company.
At launch, Highguard actually reached solid numbers, peaking at around 100,000 concurrent players. Despite this, reviews were not positive. According to Bloomberg, the game lost about 90% of its player base within the first week.
Even after this sharp decline, there was reportedly confidence within the company that funding from Tencent would keep the project alive for several months. However, Tencent eventually stopped providing financial support. As a result, 80 out of 100 employees were laid off.
The remaining team members are still working on the project, but according to Bloomberg, Steam data does not show encouraging signs for the game’s recovery.
