Swords and Shotguns Everywhere as Titanfall Devs Release New Free-to-Play Shooter, Highguard
- Highguard launches free-to-play today (Jan. 26, 10am PT) on PC, with Xbox and PS5 versions coming later.
- Built by ex-Apex, Titanfall, and CoD devs at Wildlight, the PvP raid shooter mixes swords, shotguns, and magic.
- Shadowdrop-style release with minimal marketing, betting on innovation but risking dead-on-arrival status.
Highguard is a PvP raid shooter created by devs who worked on Apex Legends, Titanfall, and Call of Duty, and it launches as free-to-play today (Jan. 26, 2026) at 10am PT, on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5.
Highguard is the debut title, and IP, created by Wildlight Entertainment, and has been worked on in secrecy for the last few years. After a grand reveal at the Game Awards in December last year, anticipation (and caution) is now riding high for what the studio promises to be a “new breed of shooter.”
The trailer below ended the Game Awards show, but with no further news about the game revealed by Wildlight it prompted some gamers to speculate whether Highguard will be dead on arrival. Instead, in a curious marketing ploy, Wildlight has decided to hold off any and all proper promotion until the game actually goes live; an in-depth showcase is set to appear on YouTube at 10am PT.
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New Name, Old Blood
Wildlight Entertainment might be yet another new studio entering the AAA space seemingly out of nowhere, but the games industry has seen a lot of these ‘big-budget indies’ appear over the last year or so. As more and more studios and publishers lay-off staff, it’s becoming common for affected developers to band together and form new companies, with Wildlight featuring a lot of people from Respawn Entertainment.
Respawn is the main studio behind Apex Legends and the Titanfall games, and was founded by former Infinity Ward heads (and Call of Duty creators) Jason West and the late Vince Zampella. Respawn is still going but its parent company, EA, started subjecting the studio to multiple layoffs a few years ago, with the most recent round of job losses occurring in April 2025.
Wildlight announced itself in February 2023, and now counts among its team multiple former devs from Apex Legends, Titanfall, various Call of Duty games, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and even cancelled shooter Concord.
Gamers were quick to name-check this ill-fated 5v5 live service FPS after Highguard’s Game Awards reveal, partly based on how Highguard looks, but also partly due to Wildlight’s weird radio silence regarding the game, as many have seen this as Wildlight priming itself for failure; even its Steam page and official site have no concrete info, outside the general idea that players take on the role of a “Warden” fighting on a mythical continent:
“There they’ll clash against rival Warden crews for possession of the Shieldbreaker, then break into and destroy the enemy base to secure territory in this all-new breed of shooter.”
Out of the Shadows and Into the Light
It’s highly likely Wildlight is attempting a similar release trick as Apex Legends. This was released without any warning by Respawn and EA in February 2019, with gaming streamers and influencers primed to showcase the game from the moment it was revealed.
The gamble in this case paid-off as it reached 70 million players by November that year.
Apex Legends was technically the first major shadowdrop, a new term referring to games released with zero or very little warning; The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster is one of the most well-known, with a more recent example being Total Chaos, a now fully standalone title based on a Doom II mod.
Everyone will know exactly what Highguard has to offer players outside large-scale sci-fi/fantasy PvP with swords, shotguns, and magic later today: Wildlight Entertainment is set to reveal everything in the below video at 10am PT.
Meanwhile, the more optimistic gamers out there have gone the other way with Highguard’s non-hype, and are already calling it a potential ARC Raiders killer. Whether Highguard takes the online shooter crown from Embark Studio’s very successful game, or falls into the trap of every other PvP raid shooter by not innovating on anything, or by offering high-price cosmetics, will be known soon enough.
