Inside Games News and Podcasts · Lawrence Sonntag

Highguard is Shutting Down - Inside Games Daily

March 4, 2026·22 min·1 clip

High Guard lasted 46 days, or '3.2 Concords,' by the show's measurement.

1. Inside Games News and Podcasts covers High Guard's shutdown on Inside Games Daily, centered on Wild Light Entertainment's decision to permanently close the free-to-play hero shooter. 2. The hosts Lawrence and the unnamed co-host matter because they frame the game as something they played and liked, while also covering the business fallout. 3. The episode asks why High Guard collapsed so quickly despite a big reveal and a strong launch. 4. Wild Light Entertainment posted on X that it had not built a sustainable player base, and the hosts repeat that message as the reason for the shutdown. 5. The game launched to almost 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, then dropped to around 10,000 just one week later. 6. By the day of the announcement, the game reached only 460 peak concurrents on Steam, which the hosts call 'not great.' 7. Wild Light promised one final update with a new warden, a new weapon, skill trees, and account-level progression before the servers go dark. 8. The hosts measure the game's run from January 26th to March 12th and call it a 46-day lifespan. 9. They compare that lifespan to PlayStation's Concord, saying High Guard lasted '3.2 concords.' 10. They also mention Lawbreakers and calculate it at '2.7 concords,' turning shutdown length into a running joke. 11. The Game Awards debut comes up as a major factor because High Guard closed the show and drew a confused reaction. 12. Jeff Keighley is named repeatedly, including his social post saying he would welcome 'everyone's apologies' after launch. 13. The hosts discuss Chad Grainer's Polygon quote that 'whether it gets a thousand people or a hundred million people, it doesn't matter.' 14. They also cite Mohamed Alavi's PC Gamer comment that the team did not need huge player counts to succeed because of Wild Light's small team size. 15. A Bloomberg report is used to add that funding may have depended on retention metrics that the game did not meet. 16. The episode says Tencent backed the game and later pulled funding, which the hosts connect to layoffs and the shutdown. 17. The tone is conversational and reactive, with jokes, interruptions, and back-and-forth disagreement over whether publicity helped or hurt. 18. The format mixes news recap with a postmortem, including comparisons to Concord, Marathon, Apex Legends, and The Finals. 19. People who follow game-industry shutdowns, player-count analysis, and live-service economics would get the most from this episode. 20. People who want a polished review or zero business talk should skip it.

As heard by us

A sharp look at how a game can draw attention and still fail to hold players.

Inside Games Daily uses High Guard's shutdown to make a clear point about how modern launches can go wrong. It stays with the facts the conversation supports: the Game Awards boost, the first-day Steam spike, the pull of a familiar hero-shooter frame, and the harder question of…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the cleanest argument for why a game can launch loud and still vanish.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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