There’s a good possibility there’s now a Geoff Keighley Curse, much like the Madden Cover Curse. The final debut at The Game Awards 2025, Highguard, has now officially become Concord 2.0, as whatever remains of the team at Wildlight Entertainment has confirmed that Highguard will permanently shut down on March 12. That would be less than 50 days after its launch on January 26, 2026.
While there are plenty of games that launch and go quietly into the night without anyone ever paying attention, Highguard has been sitting at the center of headlines since its debut at The Game Awards 2025. Personally, I’m a little surprised just how much attention it got, considering I didn’t even bother writing an article about its debut. As someone who mostly works on this site solo, I have to pick and choose what to write about at big shows like The Game Awards 2025, and I did find it a bit disappointing that the final announcement wasn’t even worth a post. To me, Highguard was just another generic hero shooter and I haven’t had any interest in that genre for years. Turns out, many others felt the same.
In a post on social media, Wildlight Entertainment confirmed Highguard’s last day is March 12. The company confirmed more than two million players checked out the game, and despite the passion and hard work of the team, Highguard hasn’t been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long term. It will get one final update, which includes a new Warden, a new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees. The patch is expected to release tonight or tomorrow morning.
Some will point their fingers at Geoff Keighley for Highguard’s demise, but I don’t believe that to be true. If anything, having the game in that slot at The Game Awards 2025 brought in those millions of curious players. Without it, the original plan of a shadow drop would have fizzled. This game would’ve been like King of Meat, a title that never saw any real players and is also being shut down. I honestly think anyone who believes The Game Awards’ announcement did this game a disservice is delusional.
There’s no way Highguard would’ve seen the numbers it did without that debut and the media’s attention following it. Where the game failed was not doing any real public testing or even doing the bare minimum of marketing following the trailer. There were so many missteps along the way that Keighley’s announcement just isn’t at fault. Besides, if the game were good, it would’ve retained a healthy portion of those two million players. Considering it has spent the last week at fewer than 1,000 concurrent players on Steam, it’s clear the game just isn’t very good.
