is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
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.
”Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game,” Wildlight says in a statement. “We’re proud of the team, talent, and the product we’ve created together. We’re also grateful for players who gave the game a shot, and those who continue to be a part of our community.”
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.
Update, February 11th: Added statement from Wildlight.
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