Highguard’s developer lays off ‘most’ of its staff just over two weeks after launch

Highguard, a new multiplayer shooter from developers who worked on games like Apex Legends and Call of Duty, launched just over two weeks ago, but developer Wildlight Entertainment is already cutting jobs at the company, according to posts from affected staffers on LinkedIn. Former Wildlight level designer Alex Graner says that “most of the team at Wildlight” was laid off today, which was backed up by former lead tech artist Josh Sobel.

It’s unclear how many jobs were cut or how the layoffs will affect the future of Highguard. Wildlight didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge.

Highguard was first announced as the final reveal at The Game Awards in December with a splashy reveal trailer promoting a January 26th launch date. The game reportedly hit nearly 100,000 concurrent players on Steam on launch day, but it has a “Mixed” rating on the platform and has just over 2,400 concurrent players as of this writing, according to SteamDB. The game launched with three-player teams, but shortly after, Wildlight added a limited time 5v5 mode that it made permanent a few days later.

This week, Riot Games also made cuts on a major live service project, laying off about 80 people from its recently-launched 2XKO fighting game set in the League of Legends universe.