More drastic changes are being made to Highguard as developer Wildlight desperately tries to hold onto a playerbase leaking through its fingers like water.

Yesterday Highguard recorded a high-point of only 694 concurrent players, according to stat-tracker SteamDB. This number has been steadily declining throughout February, a month Highguard began with approximately 13,000 daily concurrent players.

The latest effort to stem the drainage, and perhaps even reverse it, comes in the addition of a fast-paced game mode called Raid Rush, which arrives tomorrow, 27th February, 5pm GMT. This pits two teams of five against each other in base attack and defense, and does away with the faffy looting phase entirely.

During the match, teams alternate between attack and defence each round, bases will be automatically repaired and you don’t need to buy armour (everyone will get the same armour and it will increase in rarity each round). The only admin you’ll do is buy things from the Trader, if you want. It’s basically all-out action. There are various quality of life and balance fixes alongside this.

Whether the Raid Rush update will affect Highguard’s ominous predicament, I don’t know, but I’m doubtful. With a public Marathon playtest scheduled for this weekend, and likeminded hero shooters such as Overwatch resurgent, there doesn’t seem much air in the space to breathe. A more incisive question might be how long Highguard can hang on for.

Highguard was the show-closing announcement at The Game Awards in December, but a suspicious silence followed that undermined confidence in the game. Then, when the game was released, it struggled to convince. Wildlight quickly reacted by adding larger team modes to appease players, but by then the direction of travel, away from the game, seemed set. Wildlight underwent lay-offs as a result, though the team stoically insisted Highguard would live on. But with only several hundred concurrent players a day, I don’t know how long that’s feasible for.