Highguard is here. I would say it’s here to stay, but it’s cataclysmic decline following its initial release is sort of heralding its doom. I remain optimistic that the game found its core audience and will ride out the storm, but also believe all of this could have been avoided. And very easily at that.
It’s common knowledge by now that Highguard was shot in the foot with that The Game Awards trailer. Saved for the final slot, the one everyone watching would have been waiting for, Highguard was presented in the worst possible way: yet another generic hero shooter that you should force yourself to be excited for. Though Keighley introduced the game with remarks about its devs’ past experience making Titanfall, that wasn’t enough to keep a very bad taste from staying in everyone’s mouth.
But let’s say that was a mistake (as the developers appear to believe, not only because it wasn’t a very good trailer but also due to their not actually wanting to be on the final slot). What did the developers do afterward? Total radio silence. Not a peep. In fact, many had genuinely forgotten that the game was even coming out at the end of January. From TGA to release, Highguard vanished, as if it had fallen off a cliff.
The developers spent no time trying to market the game, saw no point in engaging the bad rep and trying to turn it around. They literally went offline and one day said, hey, our game is here. The philosophy behind that seems to be that the game was supposed to “speak for itself,” but I fail to understand how anyone in 2026, of all years, could ever think that a product can attest its own qualities without being marketed properly.
Nothing in our day and age can survive in the market without proper marketing. Hell, many of the technologies and software we all use and purchase today are genuinely bad products, but the marketing keeps us around and hooked.
Highguard, however good, was never going to beat the sentiments it had garnered at TGA. The worst mistake of all was letting all of that foster, allowing it to grow and mature into something of epic proportions, which was always going to overshadow the game, no matter what. The developers had a myriad of different ways to avoid this disaster: engage in picking a proper TGA slot, show better trailers post-TGA to dispel illusions and poor sentiments, engage the community on all of its points, and so on and so forth.
Instead, nothing. Not even a “thank you for caring enough for our game to hate on it.”
By doing so, Highguard created an environment where the game itself became a meme, a joke that was trendy for people to bash and clown on. Most of the reviews on Steam (now Mostly Negative) come from people with less than an hour in the game. And what’s more, Highguard gave them extra reasons for those negative reviews.
A horribly long login queue on launch day smashed any reputation it could have had right then and there. Its performance isn’t great, and its characters aren’t interesting enough to keep people around. The choice of 3v3 as the default left a lot of space and downtime in the game, and many of its stages of gameplay seem to not have any real impact on the match itself. It’s an unpolished experience, one that, even though it has many great qualities, was doomed from the start.
This is further exacerbated by its competing with established, massive IPs like Overwatch and Marvel Rivals (and, to some extent, Deadlock), all of which have something to offer, tremendous character designs, and simple and fun gameplay loops.
Highguard was in for a bloodbath, and I cannot believe that the devs didn’t know that. With so much experience at AAA powerhouses like EA, I genuinely think they fully understood the implications of that TGA shenanigan, and cannot fathom why they never reacted.
This game is a tragic victim of market whims and how the gaming world operates today, despite its objective flaws, which could have been amended post-launch anyhow. The worst part is that its developers certainly knew that was a possibility, and did not put in the effort to mitigate it, even when the writing was on the wall in bold letters.
Shutting yourself out and riding it out worked for No Man’s Sky, but lightning rarely strikes twice and being proactive always pays off more.
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