Following the swift cancellation of the shooter "Highguard," character designer Del Walker is taking action. He will no longer invest resources in live-service projects. The artist is reacting to the short lifespan of digital titles, which disappear from the market after a short time.
Studio Wildlight is moving today, March 12, 2026. finally the plug Highguard, a game that launched in January of this year, will be shut down just a few weeks after its release. Despite a large initial influx of players, adjustments to the map design, patches, and the permanent introduction of a 5v5 mode couldn't halt the downward trend.
Declining player numbers and a lack of funding sealed the fate of the title, which had only been announced with great fanfare at the Game Awards at the end of 2025.
Del Walker's focus on consistency
Del Walker, whose portfolio includes productions such as The Last of Us Part 2, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor and Halo Wars 2 Walker, who was involved in the early character development of the Highguard warden "Condor," has now released early designs for this character and used the occasion to make a fundamental decision. He no longer wants to invest his energy in games that can simply disappear.
According to Walker, this rejection of the live service model applies regardless of a project's potential success. He explicitly pointed out that he also rejects successful representatives of the genre – such as Valve's Deadlock – is not available. His creative focus remains on the representation of Black women in video games, but in formats that guarantee permanent availability.
Industry-wide trend of shutdowns
The "Highguard" case joins a series of failed live-service experiments. Just recently, Sony's shooter... Concord After eight years of development, the website was taken offline again just two weeks after its launch due to weak sales figures.
Walker's decision is a direct reaction to this market instability, where years of design work become inaccessible due to short-term business decisions made within a few days.
"Highguard" will go offline today, March 12, 2026, and will therefore no longer be playable. This is currently leading to increased player numbers, but not enough to keep the title profitable in the long term. Del Walker's decision marks a clear stance within the industry against the ephemeral nature of purely digital service structures and in favor of a return to permanently available software products.
If more developers were to come to the same conclusion, it might reach the management level, but I don't believe that will happen.
I expect awesome single-player games like Uncharted or The Last of Us from Naughty Dog.