After weeks of speculation on whether it would actually meet its release date on the 26th of January, Highguard returned to life and debuted last night by our local time. The game is a 3v3 shooter with capture-the-flag elements, horse riding, and more. It certainly tried to stand out from the crowd of live-service games, but did it succeed?
Honestly, it seems the results are too reactionary right now to judge. Highguard currently has just a 30% positive review rating on Steam at the time of writing, but with so many people making their final decisions on an hour or less of gameplay, it's hard to say these are all written in earnest.
This isn't to defend Highguard, as the game does seem to have serious, detrimental flaws. Even the developers acknowledged the matchmaking and stability issues players are encountering. Therefore, it becomes difficult to say whether this game has any staying power. Rumours point to it being planned as a shadowdrop (via Kotaku), but the hype around the launch already seems to be dwindling.
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The numbers don't lie, as we know, and for Highguard they show a strong peak, followed by a quick decline. Highguard's player count from launch peaked at 97,249, via SteamDB. However, this morning there are 9,606 players in the game. Valve's Deadlock released a new hero last night, and the game rocketed up to 98,887 players, with 37,262 on the game at the time of writing. Obviously, more players are likely to jump on as the Americans wake up and more people finish work, but we'll have to see how Highguard holds up in the coming days and weeks, to see if it can be more than a flash in the pan.