The narrative surrounding Highguard's release and subsequent closure—set to take place on March 12—has been that developer Wildlight Entertainment released a product it was pleased with, but the game failed because the studio was out of touch.
However, in a recent social media post, Wildlight's game director Chad Grenier revealed that Highguard was released unfinished because the studio had run out of money and needed to begin recouping costs.
This came in response to a user who said Highguard had been released in a "skeleton state." Grenier replied to the user, saying, "When you're out of time and money, you have to release a game with the runway you have available, and hope players stick with you post-launch."
Wildlight isn't the first studio to release a game, hoping that the revenue generated by the release will allow the studio to finish it. However, this model is usually used in paid early-access and Highguard, being a free-to-play game, was always going to struggle to raise revenue when people were sceptical about the project following the reveal trailer.
It was revealed post-launch that Wildlight was funded by Tencent, though the nature of the deal was never disclosed....
