It’s only been two weeks since Highguard launched and the reviews have been less than positive. As I pointed out in the article about the game’s reception, there were some positive reviews, but the vast majority of the negative ones I found contained more legitimate and well-founded complaints.

Of course, whether legitimate or not, the real test of a game is whether people keep playing it. Especially when it comes to competitive shooters that need people to enjoy the game.

According to the latest news, Highguard failed this test. As a result, the company began laying off employees. News of the layoffs broke yesterday when Wario64 on Twitter shared a LinkedIn post by a now-former Wildlight employee, Alex Graner, who stated that they had been let go “along with most of the team.” The post also goes on to say that there was “a lot of unreleased content” that the team had designed for players that everyone was excited to see.

The layoffs were confirmed in an email from Wildlight about an hour later Statement on Twitter say:

“Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with some of our team members while retaining a core group of developers who will continue to innovate and support the game.

“We are proud of the team, talent and product we have created together. We are also grateful to the players who gave the game a chance and those who continue to be part of our community.”

As always in such situations, we hope that those laid off will soon be taken on by other companies – and that Wildlight will do something in the meantime to ease the transition.