Is Highguard dead on arrival? New hero shooter gets negative Steam reviews

Highguard, a new hero shooter developed by former Apex Legends and Titanfall developers, has finally dropped as a free-to-play title on Steam.

Despite being released with little to no marketing, Highguard still received nearly 100,000 players at its all-time peak on Steam, with some players reporting log-in queues.

However, before its release, the game was subjected to backlash after taking the final slot at Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards, despite being a title in an already saturated market of free-to-play hero shooters.

Is Highguard dead on arrival? New hero shooter gets negative Steam reviews

Geoff Keighley, the creator of the Game Awards, was also criticized among gamers for heavily promoting Highguard on X (formerly Twitter) and giving it the final slot at the Game Awards.

A Steam user wrote, “I blame Geoff for the dog pile this game is currently getting. It’s fun. Is it something I’m going to continue playing? Probably not, but I might get a few more hours of fun out of it. Plus it’s free.”

After its announcement at the Game Awards, Highguard’s marketing team went silent and only recently began sharing gameplay videos about the game’s weapon types, modes, maps, and the different heroes players can play as.

By the time of reporting, Highguard currently has around 10,000 users playing the game, a massive drop from its all-time peak, according to SteamDB.

The game is currently listed as “Mostly Negative” on Steam, an improvement from the “Overwhelmingly Negative” reviews it received on release.

A Steam user wrote, giving Highguard a thumbs down, “I mostly just feel bad for the devs. The game clearly wasn’t designed or prepared for this level of scrutiny. Everything is blurry and unclear. The map is the size of Latvia but you only have 3 players so most of your time is spent running around the map looking for something to kill.”