Immediately after its launch, one could easily assume that gamers’ general vibe about Highguard was way off, and that the game would surely join the ranks of Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, and other hero-shooters-that-could, with player counts rising through its first hour and nearly reaching 100,000 concurrent players on Steam.
What initially looked like the first sign of success, however, turned out to be nothing more than a mix of players checking out what all the online fuss was about and Highguard’s free-to-play status. After peaking at 97K on Steam, the game’s player numbers began tumbling by an enormous margin, dropping more than 80% within the next few hours and now sitting below 17K concurrent users, shedding hundreds of players every minute (it was 20K when I started writing this article and 18K when I began this paragraph).
Although it’s, of course, absolutely normal for any game to lose relevance over time and struggle to ever surpass the numbers boosted by launch-day hype, the sheer speed at which Highguard lost over 80% of its player count – in less than 24 hours – is nothing short of anomalous when compared to any other hero shooter: Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Deadlock, pick your poison.