According to a new report, Tencent was the primary financial backer for Wildlight Entertainment, the studio behind Highguard—the free-to-play PvP "raid shooter" that debuted at The Game Awards last year. This funding arrangement was never publicly disclosed by either company.
Highguard's journey has been rocky from the start. Announced at The Game Awards in December, the game faced immediate online mockery, with many content creators declaring it dead before launch. Despite drawing nearly 100,000 concurrent players on Steam at release, it received mixed critic reviews and low user scores. Just weeks later, most of Wildlight's developers were laid off.
Before this report, it was unclear who funded Wildlight, though the studio's LinkedIn page long described it as "a new, fully-funded entertainment studio." The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley initiated the game's announcement, which some developers say led to false assumptions from the trailer, turning Highguard "into a joke from minute one." Since the layoffs, other prominent developers have defended the project.
It's still unknown how dependent Wildlight was on Tencent or if funding withdrawal caused the layoffs. Wildlight stated it would keep a "core group of developers" to maintain Highguard, but the game's website recently went offline, fueling speculation about a potential shutdown of the game or studio.
