The Hope that Indie Games Provide Despite Highguard’s High Profile Failure

I have grown more and more fond of indie games as I’ve gotten older and find myself not as excited for the big studio games as much as I used to be. I think it’s because they’ve found a way to speak to gamers in a way that highly funded titles that are looking to keep you locked into their game forever just can’t.

While big budget online multiplayer titles like Fortnite, Apex Legends and ARK: Survival Evolved have great visuals and pretty satisfying gameplay loops, they depend on large player pools to keep the games active and engaging. You and the people you play with effectively create the “stories” for a game that would otherwise have an engrossing single-player narrative for you to play through by yourself.

But that recipe doesn’t always result in success. Several new titles over the last number of years have failed quickly and spectacularly.

Speaking of a failed title just like that…

As of March 12, 2026, Highguard joined the list of online multiplayer games that get shut down after a very short lifespan. While this growing list may cause gamers everywhere to despair that the only new games we get will continue to be an endless chain of sequels in established IPs like Call of Duty, I believe that the failures of the post-COVID-19 era of the video game industry actually offer some hope for gamers, young and old.

Games like Highguard and Concord – a game that was online for only two weeks before Sony pulled its plug – should provide encouragement that there are still development studios that are trying to create something out of nothing. 

While the mechanics of each game are very familiar (competitive team-based first-person shooters), the settings were fresh with all new characters and locales. Concord seems inspired by fans of the Guardians of the Galaxy from Marvel, and Highguard was set firmly in a high fantasy medieval setting, but both tried to put their own spin on these to a certain degree. With unique premises to try to bring something new to players, why do most, if not all of them, fail?

The frustrating part should come from the lack of patience that’s shown from the publishers who have financed these titles. At Concord’s announcement, Firewalk Studios laid out an entire year’s worth of story content that would be shown in-game at set intervals. However, due to lack of a solid player base, the game was shut down within two weeks of its release and we will never see the story of the game. It’s super encouraging and uplifting that a dedicated team worked on something like this for nearly a decade, but also very disappointing and frustrating that a company as large as Sony cut the cord before it really ever had a chance.

Indie games have shown up and eaten the lunch of some AAA titles and, when done well, outclass big studios in nearly every aspect of game creation.

Highguard’s developer, Wildlight Entertainment, was mostly funded by the Chinese company, TenCent. Not much is known on how long of a leash TenCent allowed Wildlight to produce the game without interference, but after debuting to a strong 97,000ish concurrent players on Steam, the player base quickly dropped off into the low hundreds. 

For a free-to-play game that relies on the purchase of microtransactions, there’s virtually no way to recoup any costs on development. However, what’s surprising and frustrating is that there was so much riding on this game that it needed to be successful right away because there was no backup plan. 

Because of this, the game shut down within six weeks of its release this year. Poor planning and poor support lead to another high-profile shutdown, and that should frustrate and disappoint gamers who try to support the things they like as best they can and hope that publishers will do the same.

This is where I will turn your attention to the independent developer side of the industry. While it is oh-so-difficult to make it in this space, there have been many successes since the indie revolution kicked off in earnest between 2008-2010. Early titles like Minecraft, Limbo, Braid, Super Meat Boy, Fez and Spelunky proved that because of digital distribution, developers could bypass the traditional dev studio to publisher pipeline to make their games. While having the backing of a publisher usually means a little more security financially, it could also diminish innovation in favor of going with what’s worked before because money needs to be made.

And while I do still play some AAA games here and there, my gaming habits over the last five to ten years have shifted to smaller indie experiences with shorter game loops. Card games and rogue-likes, sometimes in combination together, have really caught my attention. They provide a fun challenge while being able to play in short bursts. Games like Balatro, Slay the Spire, Hades and Hades II, Shogun Showdown, Dead Cells and Into the Breach have broken through for me as standout titles that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys games. 

The really cool thing is that most of the titles I just mentioned are just as popular (if not more so) than a good chunk of games released through the traditional publisher/studio partnership. Indie games have shown up and eaten the lunch of some AAA titles and, when done well, outclass big studios in nearly every aspect of game creation.

All that said, I don’t actually think games that are made from indie teams are automatically better than the big-budget publisher-funded games. It’s a way of the business and will continue to be around as long as games are produced. I’ve also played some indie games that I didn’t enjoy and I know aren’t for me. However, I do think that if you want to feel encouraged about where gaming is going in the future, you should look at what independent developers are doing.