Announcing a game close to release can be a risky endeavor. You are far too close to the final release to really adjust the vision, and you have minimal time to transition from the announcement to the actual release of the product. Last month, developer Wildlight Entertainment, which is made up of former Apex Legends and Titanfall devs, took such a risk on their debut title, Highguard, when it was announced in the much-coveted final game announcement slot of the Video Game Awards.
The game has since drawn some ire from games, heavily downvoting trailers on YouTube or criticizing the game’s position in a spot usually reserved for bigger announcements. Again, though, there isn’t much you can do about that, which is where Paul Tassi of Forbes comes in, having written several articles about following this announcement, the studio has been mostly silent, with no big marketing push for a game releasing January 26, now only a week away. As it turns out, the story gets more interesting.
As Kotaku had previously reported, prices for trailers at the VGA can reportedly start at around $450,000 for a 60-second spot, with a 3-minute trailer reportedly costing $1 million, which the Highguard Trailer was closer to. This is a lot of money to spend on a trailer if there are no plans to capitalize on its momentum. This is not always the case, though, as time slots have also been suggested to be offered for free if everything aligns correctly. So it appears to be the case with Highguard.
Paul Tassi reported that two independent sources approached him to report that developer Wildlight Entertainment did not pay anything to appear in that final slot, as it was offered the placement by Showrunner Geoff Keighley. Other rumors have suggested that this occurred in part because another game was meant to take that slot, only for whoever that was to pull out due to a delay to their title, which opened up the slot again, though Tassi was quick to confirm that this is more speculative than the initial claim.
Geoff Keighley himself has now come under some criticism for the choice to offer the spot to Wildlight, given how badly the internet has sought to roast the latter’s game following its announcement. In both cases, criticism is probably unfair. There really is no way to know what choices Keighley had to fill the timeslot, and in the case of Highguard, it is set to be Free-to-Play, so I feel like at least trying it before you burn it at the stake is a fair request. This being said, I do think there is some fair criticism to be had in their marketing post announcement, but another thing entirely.
Highguard is set to release on January 26, 2026, for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC.
