By now you probably know the story of Highguard: Geoff Keighley chose it as the final trailer shown at the Game Awards in December. The film opened with subpar reviews and ratings and is now probably on its last legs. The Wildlight Entertainment team – at least what’s left of it – is now wondering whether it can turn things around, and if not, when will the final hammer fall?

There are still ten months to go in 2026, but for now Highguard – a relatively minor game in the grand scheme of things – will probably go down in history as the biggest flop of the year so far. How did it all go so wrong and what, if anything, could Wildlight have done differently?

Dominant data

Let’s first look at the numbers, which don’t paint a pretty picture. The trend of the Steam charts is down significantly from the game’s launch a month ago, when it peaked at 15,147 concurrent players. In itself, that’s a mediocre number for a free-to-play game. Currently there are an average of less than 1,000 players at the same time.

Apex Legends, which was considered the best comparison of Highguard, launched on Steam to an average of 74,957 players and peaking at 117,193 in November 2020. Admittedly, that was almost two years after the Stealth launch, but it’s fair to say that it attracted much more than 15,000 concurrent players when it debuted in early 2019.

One should keep in mind that a significant number of players probably paid attention to the game just because of its premium slot at The Game Awards. Whether they liked it or not, or simply played for a few minutes before giving a negative review, Keighley undoubtedly raised the game’s profile and without him the numbers would have been much lower.

Speaking of reviews: The topic of “review bombing” concerns many people and is sometimes blamed for the game’s (unfairly) poor reception. Currently the game has a 46% positive rating on Steam (English reviews only, 45% in all languages), but that could be deceiving. As this article showedhis numbers aren’t that bad if players give him a chance.

Cependant, I think it’s a bit too generous to only count reviews from players who have played at least five hours. It usually doesn’t take me that much time to decide if a game is right for me. If I’ve played it for that long – especially if it’s a match-based PvP shooter that would span a dozen or so matches – then I probably like the game, so the five-hour limit amounts to some kind of survival bias in a way.

As I write this today, Février 25, 2026, here are the positive reviews for various lesson breaks, including all languages:

0 hours (all reviews): 45% on 39,496 reviews
1 hour: 59% on 26,496 reviews
2 hours: 73% on 17,191 reviews
3 hours: 79% on 12,889 reviews
4 hours: 81% from 9,915 reviews
5 hours: 82% from 7,754 reviews
8 hours: 83% from 4,393 reviews
10 hours: 82% from 3,258 reviews

This certainly paints a rosier picture, as the game has a positive rating of around 80% among players who have given it a solid chance.

Since there was likely a lot of review bombardment during the game’s initial release, here’s a look at how the reviews stack up over the various time periods since release:

First week: 41% from 31,120 reviews
Second week: 67% on 3,119 reviews
Third week: 60% on 1,214 reviews
Fourth week: 58% on 736 reviews
Fifth week (so far): 65% on 160 reviews

That’s less positive, but it at least confirms that the worst of the damage was done early on.

Now the bad news: That’s still not good enough for the type of game that Highguard is. While 80% on Steam is the borderline between “Mixed” and “Very Positive,” it’s really just average at best.

Many years ago, when Steam Spy existed, its maintainer pointed out that the average rating score on Steam was 82%. This means that half of all games were above 82% and the other half were below. Therefore, a game rated 80% was actually in the bottom half of games; There were more games rated higher than lower.

The newer “Review Score Distribution” chart. on this page seems to roughly confirm this finding, as about half of all games are on either side of 80%.

Think of it like having games on your Steam wishlist or in your library. They’re all “good” in the sense that you’ll want to play them, but probably don’t have time to deal with them all. So you play the games you like the most and rarely, if ever, get to the games that are at the bottom of your list.

The same applies to a game with a level of 80%. It’s okay, you like it, and maybe it’s even objectively “good,” but there are things you like better. This is the fate of many good, but not great, jeux.

Take another look at the positive reviews per hour listed above. Of the players who enjoyed the game at an 80% increase (3+ hours), only 3,258/12,889 = 25% played it for a full 10 hours or more. This means that three out of four people who really like the game haven’t even played for ten hours. How many games have you played for more than 10 hours in the last month? I’d imagine there are quite a few, and that means they’re better (for you) than Highguard.

Highguard may have been very popular with a subset of people, but was it good enough to get them hooked on Apex Legends, Surveillance, Ligue des Légendes, Fortnite, or whatever extraction/hero shooter or even MMORPG they regularly play? The answer seems to be “no”.

The way back

So what could Wildlight Entertainment have done to prevent this situation? The obvious answer is “improving the game,” but that’s only part of it, and a subjective one at that.

Should they have declined Geoff Keighley’s offer to release the trailer at the end of The Game Awards? As I’ve mentioned before, this reveal means Highguard probably only has as many starting players as before, and if that wasn’t enough to keep the lights on (as it appears it isn’t), then half or even fewer players wouldn’t have.

The main mistake, à mon avis, was that they didn’t make the most of the gift they stumbled upon. In the seven weeks between the Game Awards and Highguard’s release, we heard virtually nothing about the game. A smart team would have had the marketing materials ready to go as soon as the trailer was released, or at least the day after the Game Awards. Normally this would have been a follow-up to the big announcement, but in this case the plan would have been, at least in part, to do damage control after the public backlash.

At the very least, the team should have realized in the meantime that the public perception of Highguard wasn’t very good and worked to correct that. Instead as The game’s YouTube channel As it turns out, nothing was posted between the first trailer and the release, after which a series of videos were released highlighting the gameplay, the developer’s vision and individual elements.

Cependant, at the time, people preferred to play the game and form their own opinions, for better or worse, rather than watch videos about it. The developers had lost the right to shape the narrative by allowing negative feelings to fester for almost two months and doing nothing about it. They pinned all their hopes on the state of the game – probably because of one thing Culture of toxic positivity – and every opportunity to develop goodwill was missed.

We’re all tired of countless teasers, trailers, hype videos, developer diaries and marketing in general for games that are months or years away, but Highguard is a perfect example of this more Marketing and hype were urgently needed. The fact that they had all of these videos ready upon release makes their decision to hold back even more confusing. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered – maybe the game just wasn’t ready yet and should have been released seven months after the Game Awards instead of seven weeks – but it couldn’t have hurt. Now it’s probably too late.