Highguard developer Wildlight Entertainment has revealed it originally planned to shadow-drop its free-to-play “raid shooter,” until host Geoff Keighley offered to highlight it as the final reveal of 2025’s The Game Awards instead.
In an interview with GameSpot, studio cofounder and game director Dusty Welch said the plan was always for Highguard to be a “quiet shadow-drop.” It’s a strategy that worked well for Apex Legends, the popular free-to-play battle royale that many of the Highguard team at Wildlight previously worked on, he said.
That was the plan, at least until Keighley told Wildlight he loved the game and had an idea. He wanted to highlight the free-to-play shooter from an independent studio as part of the show, according to Welch.
