- Wildlight Entertainment CEO and founder Dusty Welch believes the studio could have made a “better” trailer Highguard
- “I wish Highguard had been better received. I wish the feedback had been better,” Welch says
- The game was released yesterday and now has a “Mostly Negative” score on Steam despite nearly surpassing 100,000 concurrent players on Steam on launch day
Seam Highguard launching to negative reviews on Steam, Wildlight Entertainment’s CEO has admitted that the studio could have marketed the game better.
The free PvP shooter, created by fhv Apex Legends and Titan fall developers, was announced as ‘the last thing’ at The Game Awards last month with a lukewarm trailer and a January 26, 2026 release date.
Since then, Wildlight had been radio silent, offering no new details or social media updates about the game, leaving everyone wondering if the game would be delayed.
Well, the game has officially been released on PC and consoles, and while the game has achieved a peak of 97,249 concurrent players on launch day (via SteamDB), the game is currently sitting on a ‘Mostly Negative’ score on Steam, with 13,363 negative reviews compared to 6,027 positive reviews.
The response has been quite mixed, to say the least, and Wildlight Entertainment CEO and founder Dusty Welch wishes it had been better received prior to launch.
Speaking to PC Gamer after a hands-on event last week, Welch discussed the response to the game’s announcement trailer at The Game Awards, admitting that the studio could have made a “better” trailer.
“Look, I wish Highguard had been better received. I wish the feedback had been better,” Welch said. “Part of it is on us, right? We didn’t bury our heads in the sand. We, as a team, saw the feedback. We’re gamers ourselves. We’re online ourselves and read the feedback.”
“I think at the end of the day we could have made a different trailer – a better trailer that wasn’t about entertaining, which is what we mean [The Game Awards] was about. We could have done something that did a better job of highlighting the game’s unique loop. So it’s up to us. We’ll take that, but the team is resilient.”
Look at
Welch also said that Highguard was the ceremony’s final announcement because the show’s host, Geoff Keighley, enjoyed his time playing the game and wanted “to do something different.”
“Geoff is a friend of the studio. He came in and played the game a few times and he loved it,” Welch said.
“So when he said ‘Look, I’d love to do something different and put an indie studio and a free-to-play game on here and put it on the show,’ I mean, as an indie who was unknown by choice, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to do that? Here’s the biggest platform [in gaming]not?”
But why the radio silence after the match announcement? According to design and creative director Jason McCord, the plan was always to go dark leading up to the launch.
“The trailer for The Game Awards was meant to be an announcement trailer. The plan was to announce, go dark, and then the next thing we want the players to see is the game,” McCord said. “If the reception had been completely different, it would have been the same plan. The key is you have to play the game.”
If you are thinking of checking out Highguardthe game is now available to play on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
The best pc controllers
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can too follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, video unboxings, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
