Highguard Hits Nearly 100,000 Concurrent Players on Steam at Launch

Highguard, a new free-to-play multiplayer shooter from Wildlight Entertainment, attracted nearly 100,000 players on Steam when it launched on Monday. The game, which shot to fame following its final reveal at The Game Awards 2025, launches on PS5, PC and Xbox Series S/X on January 26. Despite a good concurrent player base on launch day, reviews for the game on Steam were negative.

Highguard has nearly 100,000 players on Steam

According to SteamDB data, Highguard’s peak number of concurrent players reached 97,249 on Monday. However, player numbers dropped dramatically the next day, with the game peaking at just over 19,000 concurrent players on Tuesday. As of this writing, Highguard’s Steam concurrent player count hovers below 10,000.

While the multiplayer game amassed a healthy player base on day one, it was bombarded with negative reviews on Steam. After more than 19,000 reviews, the game has a “mostly negative” rating on the platform.

Backlash after revelations

Highguard developer Wildlight followed a strange marketing strategy by maintaining radio silence for the game after it was revealed at the 2025 Game Awards. Geoff Keighley, producer, creator and presenter of The Game Awards, introduced Highguard as the final reveal at the December event. Following the announcement, the game faced backlash from players who viewed it as yet another free-to-play shooter in the mold of Concord or Overwatch.

On January 26, Wildlight held its first press conference, which provided an in-depth look at Highguard’s gameplay and developer insights. Highguard is a PvP raid shooter where players take on the role of a warden with unique abilities, fighting for objectives and raiding enemy bases.

The Overwatch roster comes with different guns, raid tools, guns and raid tools, and magic abilities, each suited to a different gameplay loop of raid combat and destruction; siege, stealth, infiltration; base repair and defense; harvesting and collecting loot; open world combat, and more.

Highguard launches with five maps, six bases, eight wardens, three mounts, ten weapons, and three raiding tools. Wildlight also shared a post-launch roadmap for multiplayer, confirming that Episode 2 content will be released within two weeks.

On Tuesday, Wildlight thanked fans for playing Highguard and said it would roll out an update to address stability issues.

“Thanks to everyone who has participated and explored Highguard so far. FYI, tonight we will be rolling out a client update to all platforms to address various stability issues. We will continue to investigate the issue and expect to roll out more patches this week,” the official Highguard account on X posted.

On Wednesday, Wildlight said it was working on adding highly requested features such as a FoV slider for consoles, toggle settings for ADS and crouching, and more graphics scaling options for PC. The studio confirmed it’s aiming to roll out the new patch on Thursday. Highguard is free to play on PC (via Steam), PS5, and Xbox Series S/X.