Highguard Launches as a Free to Play PvP Raid Shooter From Former Apex and Titanfall 2 Devs, Spikes to 97K Steam Players in First Hour

Wildlight Entertainment has officially gone live with Highguard, its new free to play PvP raid shooter that first appeared as the surprise final reveal during The Game Awards 2025. Built by a team of former Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends developers, the studio is positioning Highguard as its opening swing in the modern competitive shooter market, blending familiar genre pillars into a more objective driven, base breaking format that is easy to understand but hard to master.

At launch, Highguard is available across PC, Xbox Series X and S, and PlayStation 5, following a 25 minute gameplay and launch showcase led by founder and game director Chad Grenier alongside design and creative director Jason McCord. The studio’s core pitch is the raid shooter concept, and in practical terms it lands as a match based mode where macro objectives and tempo control matter as much as raw aim.

Highguard plays as a 3v3 first person shooter where two teams begin at opposite ends of one of 5 launch maps, each anchored by 1 of 6 base types. The win condition is built around a single high impact objective: secure the Shieldbreaker, a massive magical sword used to bring down the protective shield on the enemy base. Once the shield drops, the match shifts into a high pressure breach phase where teams push into the enemy base to destroy 3 generators and close the game.

The character layer comes through Wardens, 1 of 8 magical characters, each carrying unique abilities that can meaningfully reshape fights and spacing. Loadouts are supported by 10 standard weapons plus 3 stronger limited use Raid weapons, giving teams a clear risk reward economy that can swing momentum if timed correctly. One of the most distinctive mobility decisions is that traversal happens via mounts rather than on foot, with 3 options at launch: a horse, a panther, and a bear. In practice, this creates a different readability profile than traditional sprint based shooters, because rotations become louder, more committal, and easier to scout if the opposing team has strong map awareness.

From a genre strategy standpoint, Highguard is a deliberate mashup that tries to turn proven loops into a single competitive package. The Shieldbreaker control dynamic feels like Capture the Flag pressure, while the larger maps and loot boxes with upgraded weapons and armor clearly borrow battle royale DNA. The base attack flow adds a tactical layer through planted bombs that can be defused, introducing a Search and Destroy style decision tree where timing, positioning, and denial utility become just as valuable as mechanical skill.

That genre blending is also why Highguard generated debate as the closing reveal of The Game Awards 2025, with early conversation centering on what the game is trying to be and whether its identity reads clearly at first glance. Now that the game is live, early traction is already material. On Steam alone, Highguard hit 97K concurrent players within its first hour, based on SteamDB tracking.

Validation and what to watch next is where this gets interesting for competitive players. A first hour concurrency spike is a strong top of funnel signal, but the long game will be retention, matchmaking quality, balance cadence, and how quickly the meta stabilizes around Wardens, mounts, and Raid weapon availability. If Wildlight can deliver tight netcode feel, clear onboarding, and transparent balancing, Highguard has a credible runway to become a repeatable nightly queue for squads that want something faster than a battle royale but deeper than a pure arena deathmatch.

Wildlight is also signaling aggressive live service execution, stating it already has a full 2026 roadmap planned, with more Wardens, bases, weapons, maps, and mounts targeted as soon as next month. If that cadence holds, Highguard could iterate quickly into a sharper identity, especially as player feedback clarifies which systems feel like innovation and which feel like friction.

What is your first impression of Highguard’s raid shooter concept, does the Shieldbreaker objective and mount based traversal feel like a fresh competitive hook, or do you prefer a cleaner single genre focus?