Highguards utvecklare reflekterar över spelets tillkännagivande på TGA 2025

Yesterday, Wildlight Entertainment’s Highguard was released on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5—and the players are not happy with the game so far, with Highguard currently having a lot of negative reviews on Steam.

Speaking of which, in the latest interview with PC Gamer, Wildlight Entertainment CEO and its founder Dusty Welch reveals the game could have received much better reception since Highguard was announced at The Game Awards 2025. He also confirmed the previous report on how the show’s host, Geoff Keighley, was impressed with the title and how all of this has impacted the game’s reveal and following launch, as you can check below:

"Part of that's on us, right? We didn't put our heads in the sand. We, as a team, saw the feedback. We're gamers ourselves. We're online ourselves reading the feedback."

I think, ultimately, we could have made a different trailer – a better trailer that wasn't about entertaining, which is what we think was about. We could have made something that did a better job of highlighting the unique loop of the game. So that's on us. We take that, but the team is resilient.

Geoff's a friend of the studio. He came in and he played the game a couple of times, and he loved it. So when he said 'Look, I'd love to do something different and put an indie studio and a free-to-play game up here and put it in the show,' I mean, as an indie who was unknown by choice, who wouldn't jump at the chance to do that? Here's the biggest platform, right?”

At the same time, creative director of Highguard Jason McCord reveals the studio wanted to use a way more another marketing for the game – more similar to Apex Legends back in 2019:

“The plan was to announce, go dark, and then the next thing that we want players to see is the game. If the reception had been totally different, it would have been the same plan. The key is, you've got to play the game."

Highguard is a free-to-play first-person shooter developed by Wildlight Entertainment, former developers of Apex Legends and Titanfall.

The game is currently available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5.