‘Highguard’ Dev Says Hero Shooter Is Alive And Well Despite Official Website Outage, YouTube Delisting
Where many would take such slow erasure of Highguard‘s internet footprint as a sign that the ill-fated hero shooter is being put out to pasture, one of Wildlight Entertainment’s few remaining team members is attempting to assure the game’s dwindling player base that contrary to appearances, future updates and content additions are still in active development.
The first suggestion that Highguard was all but officially dead and buried came by way of its official website, which on February 17th, just days after Wildlight Entertainment axed “most of the team” behind their Tencent-backed debt, was discovered to have been taken offline, its entire contents replaced with a generic “site unavailable” message from its webhost.
Further evidence to the game’s seeming death rattle would be provided via YouTube, as users who rushed to cover the above website situation found that Highguard had been wholesale removed as a valid game title for categorization.
Thus, with most of its dev team given the boot, its website suddenly and totally being made unavailable, and its entire being no longer recognized by YouTube, it’s understandable why the wider internet understandably presumed that Highguard had finally been relegated to the dust bin of video game history.
RELATED: Wildlight Entertainment Axes “Most Of The Team” Behind ‘Highguard’ Less Than A Month After Launch
But as the saying goes, ‘No one’s ever really gone‘, and following roughly a day of the internet pronouncing its death far and wide, noted gaming news outlet CharlieIntel were made privy to an official ‘sign of life’ confirmation, as provided by Wildlight Entertainment via the official Highguard Discord server.
Asked by a curious player as to “What’s up with the website? Being updated?”, an unspecified member of the game’s dev team explained, “Not sure on the timeframe, but basically needs to be transferred and simplified”, before moving to temper their expectations by noting “Low priority atm (reputational damage already done). Now we just need to focus on delivering updates and content to improve.”
Meanwhile, the dev does not appear to have provided any information regarding the game’s YouTube exile.
As previously reported, Highguard‘s live-service ambitions began to crumble just a little under a month after its initial launch, with February 11th seeing now-former level designer Alex Graner posting to his personal LinkedIn account “Unfortunately, along with most of the team at Wildlight, I was laid off today.”
“This one really stings as there was a lot of unreleased content I was really looking forward to that I and others designed for Highguard,” said Garner. “However, I’m excited for my next adventure. If your team or anyone you know needs an experienced Level Designer, hit me up!”
Issuing an official statement on the matter to Kotaku, Wildlight Entertainment’s remaining skeleton crew asserted, “Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game.”
“We’re proud of the team, talent, and the product we’ve created together. We’re also grateful for players who gave the game a shot, and those who continue to be a part of our community.”
