Highguard famously capped off The 2025 Game Awards stream, but so far, reception at launch is all over the map.
Highguard, the new free-to-play PvP “raid shooter” from Wildlight Entertainment, has barely been out for a day, but it’s already been a wild ride for the new FPS. Though critical reception is already glowing, player response runs the gamut. And arguably toughest of all: It’s become a meme.
Currently, its Steam user score is sitting at “mostly negative”, with 32% of nearly 15,000 player reviews giving the game a thumbs-up. Players have complained of long match queue times, getting kicked from the tutorial, and other server issues. More still said the game also performs poorly, with frame rate drops and other issues on Windows PC.
Of course, it’s impossible to have any discussion about Highguard’s post-launch performance without acknowledging the review-bombing. From the moment it was unveiled as the final reveal of The 2025 Game Awards, Highguard was fighting an uphill battle: Not everyone was thrilled at the prospect of yet another live-service shooter enterting the space, and were peeved that the announcement trailer — which featured eye-catching visuals but offered little to explain the game — nabbed the coveted “one more thing” announcement. In fact, the backlash was ramping up on Reddit a month before Highguard’s launch, with some comparing it to Sony’s notoriously failed 2024 shooter, Concord.
“High Guard is mainly suffering because Concord came first”, one Redditor commented on a post discussing all the hate for a game that wasn’t even out yet. “I don’t think people would be dunking on it as much if Concord didn’t just Concord last year, but if I had to guess I think people didn’t like the [Game Awards] closing out on this game.”
You can see this mixed reception plainly in Highguard’s recording player count. The shooter peaked at 97,249 concurrent players on Steam just one hour after its launch. By the evening on the east coast — when many players typically start to get off work and spend time playing games — those numbers had dropped by half.
