Highguard’s brutally difficult start to life has continued today, as it has fallen out of the top 200 in Steam’s bestsellers chart for the first time, just three days after launch.
The game was always going to face an uphill battle. It claimed the final spot at 2025’s The Game Awards, in lieu of what many presumed would be a huge new triple-A title, and was immediately slammed with dislikes on YouTube and berated by the masses on social media, but while most were expecting it to perform poorly, dropping out of Steam’s top 200 games this quickly could be a death knell for the game.
Highguard Has Already Fallen Below Some Pretty Divisive Games In Steam’s Global Top Sellers Chart
Following its release, Highguard has had a tough time. It opened to ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ reviews on Steam, with the internet quickly slamming the game, and it dropped below 10,000 concurrent players within 24 hours. That’s still far more than Concord ever managed to achieve on the Valve-owned platform, so there is still hope, but it’s certainly worrying.
This early performance should come as no surprise, then, as at the time of writing, Highguard has dropped to 214th place on the Steam Top Sellers chart, less than 72 hours after launch.
In Two Years Time, Highguard Could Have A Single-Player Mode
Following its launch, Highguard is aiming high for the future.
To throw some context to this 214th place, the much-maligned Dragon Age: The Veilguard sits in 201st, Fragpunk, a game which lost 98 percent of its players last year, is in 202nd, and something called Wobbly Life is in 199th, according to data from SteamDB.
It’s worth noting that Steam’s Top Sellers chart isn’t calculated by the total number of downloads, but instead, the amount of revenue a game has generated. This means that games like Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Wobbly Life have a slight advantage over Highguard, as players have to pay a fixed fee to purchase them, unlike the recent shooter, which is free-to-play.
The problem is, free-to-play games often rely on revenue from in-game purchases to subsidize the fact that players get the game for free. Highguard is laden with these in-game purchases, with players able to use “Highguard Gold” to purchase cosmetics and a Battle Pass, but from its lowly position in the Steam charts, it seems like not many players are doing that.
The team at Wildlight Entertainment is clearly ambitious. During its launch stream, the studio revealed its plans for the game’s first 12 months. This included new wardens, bases, weapons, and game modes. The problem is that, with such low player retention and those players not spending money in the game, it could be hard for Highguard to get through the first year.
- Released
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January 26, 2026
- Developer(s)
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Wildlight Entertainment
- Publisher(s)
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Wildlight Entertainment
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
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Full
