I won't relitigate the
noxious cloud of internet that surrounded Highguard, because ultimately, premature "hate playing" is not the reason it's going away. Highguard is shutting down because live service games are not allowed to be unpopular.
It's important to establish that Highguard had fans. Thousands of people were playing it—its regular concurrents hung around 400 on Steam and at least
double that on PS5, according to game director Chad Grenier. Remember, peak concurrents are
not a measure of how many total people played a game that day—that number is usually much higher but never public.