The showstopper for the 2025 Game Awards left many underwhelmed despite the hype speech it got from host Geoff Keighley, but Highguard promised at the very least to release for free and within a month of the award show on January 26th. That’s a little under two weeks from now, and though that’s news for those looking for a new multiplayer experience, there’s something puzzling about it. Typically, before a big release such as this, there’s some marketing present. Usually, there’s a story or gameplay trailer, or at least some manner of update from the developers, but for Highguard there hasn’t been so much as a peep since its announcement. 

Plenty of games have been released without much fanfare, of course; Wildlight Entertainment, the developers of Highguard, are some of the same team that worked on Apex Legends, which was shadowdropped without any public announcement beforehand. But Highguard has been under a lot of scrutiny ever since its reveal, perhaps due to its placement in the awards, and many on social media in other publications have pointed out that the developer’s silence is odd. There have been several rumors floating around about Wildlight’s behavior, though ultimately all of them are speculative at this point due to the lack of information. Some have decried that the developers of the game have “given up,” or might cancel or delay the game due to the backlash they’ve received. Consistently, however, you will see many claiming a lack of excitement for the new title, and at least as far as social media is concerned, it definitely seems like it. A catastrophic launch failure like Concord is frequently prophesied for Highguard, and as Paul Tassi at Forbes remarked, the like ratio for its trailer lately sits unfavorably. But again, there’s a lot that’s occluded here, and though the community seems suspicious of Wildlight’s silence, the game hasn’t had the chance to prove itself yet.