The fantasy FPS Highguard is here, and after closing out The Game Awards last year then going a little quiet on the marketing front, it debuted to 97,000 players on Steam. Among the people checking it out is former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro-turned-streamer Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek, who finds it somewhat middling thus far. "The vision is there, the FPS is not," he said during a stream where he played the shooter from developer Wildlight Entertainment, as spotted by Jake Lucky on Twitter. "The game's gameplay is really good, it's just poor performance. That's the only thing that I would say is a little rough." I don't think he's wrong. Highguard's world is gorgeous and eye-catching amid its more sci-fi-centered contemporaries. But, unfortunately, Shroud's tepid take matches the general reception toward Highguard thus far. The game's Steam reviews sit at a "Mostly Negative" rating on Steam, and its player-count has dropped significantly since going live – peaking at just over 19,000 concurrent players the day after launch, per SteamDB. Hours after launch, Highguard has "Mostly Negative" reviews and a peak of 97,000 players on Steam New FPS Highguard has a full year of updates "deep in development," split up to counteract "live-service fatigue" "I wish Highguard had been received better," CEO admits, after cancelling a planned Apex Legends-style shadow drop "The vision is there, the FPS is not, the game's gameplay is really good, it's just poor performances... is a little rough"Shroud gives his take on Highguard pic.twitter.com/7DzNUIKyipJanuary 27, 2026 "The vision is there, the FPS is not, the game's gameplay is really good, it's just poor performances... is a little rough"Shroud gives his take on Highguard pic.twitter.com/7DzNUIKyipJanuary 27, 2026 "The vision is there, the FPS is not, the game's gameplay is really good, it's just poor performances... is a little rough"Shroud gives his take on Highguard pic.twitter.com/7DzNUIKyipJanuary 27, 2026 There are often issues when anything live-service first launches. Should you attract a large amount of people at once, a game's servers and overall optimization will be stretched to accommodate everyone smoothly. These problems can be and, likely, are going to be ironed out in the coming weeks and months, as the devs find and address niggling problems in patches. Wildlight's got big plans too, outlining a strategy for Highguard based on counteracting the manufactured FOMO prevalent among other live-service games. The year coming promises new episodes of additional features every two months, each split into two-parts. The team states they're "building a game that people want to come back to." Hopefully we'll get a chance to see that come to pass. As Highguard continues to get trashed online, Baldur's Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke says "I don't like people s***ing on things" as "it's easy to destroy things, it's a lot harder to build them"