A level designer laid off from Highguard developer Wildlight believes the free-to-play shooter’s difficulties stem from having “leaned too far into the competitive scene”.

Acknowledging that the “really big spotlight” placed on the game following its reveal at The Game Awards additionally added pressure, senior level designer Alex Graner talked candidly on the Quad Damage podcast about the “constantly evolv[ing]” game, suggesting that his “biggest fear [came] when [the studio] decided to go full-in on 3v3”.

“I can only speak to my side of it as a level designer, but when I joined [Wildlight], it was trying to figure out this new, ambitious game, and this team is always pushing the boundaries,” he said, as transcribed by PCGN. “You don’t strive to create something that doesn’t work out, but it happens, unfortunately. Throughout development, we really leaned into the competitive side of it, and that was always one of my biggest fears as a player.

“3v3 duos is always the sweatiest version of anything like battle royale, objective modes, wingman, you know it, you name it,” he added. “It requires such a high intensity of communication with your team, and team play, that it doesn’t leave much room for casualness. I think that was the biggest thing that turned a lot of players off Highguard.”

Graner said Apex Legends came just as battle royales were a “kind of an up-and-coming mode” and was “really easy to understand after you played one game”, which is why it was so successful. Conversely, Highguard was a little more complex.

“Highguard has all these different rules and stages, it’s like, ‘Oh, you want to loot, now we’ve got to chase this objective, now we have to plant this objective, now it’s overtime… It has all these rules, which I think works at a really high level, but when players are first coming in it’s a lot to grasp,” he admitted.

“On top of all that, because it was 3v3, that kind of game just requires high-skill movement and shooting, which is already a pretty high [bar to] entry as well. So if you just have a few bad games or your teammates aren’t sticking together, you’re just going to get rolled, and it’s very hard to 1v2 in our game.

“It’s all designed to be a team-based shooter. I think that was the biggest thing. People just kind of turned it off because they didn’t have the team.”

Just yesterday (27th February), a new report alleged that Tencent pulled funding from developer Wildlight just two weeks after the game’s launch. Staff were called to an all-hands meeting, and then told that there would be layoffs as Tencent had pulled funding as Highguard had seemingly failed to meet whatever metrics Tencent had for it.

Wildlight publicly confirmed layoffs a day later but wouldn’t specify numbers, and it insisted “a core group of developers” remained to work on the game. It’s thought fewer than 20 people remain at Wildlight today.

Tencent’s role in Highguard’s development was, curiously, kept quiet. It wasn’t until several days after the layoffs that Game File confirmed Tencent’s involvement. The reason for the secrecy around the company’s involvement is unclear.