{"id":2278649,"date":"2026-02-12T09:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T09:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2278649"},"modified":"2026-02-12T09:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T09:23:07","slug":"wildlight-entertainment-confirms-layoffs-unknown-number-of-employees-affected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wildlight-entertainment-confirms-layoffs-unknown-number-of-employees-affected\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlight Entertainment confirms layoffs, unknown number of employees affected"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Highguard developer Wildlight Entertainment has laid off an unspecified number of staff.&ZeroWidthSpace;<\/p>\n

In a statement on social media<\/a>, the studio announced that a “core group of developers” will remain to support the free-to-play shooter.<\/p>\n

“We made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game,” it said.<\/p>\n

“We’re proud of the team, talent, and the product we’ve created together. We’re also grateful for players who have the game a shot, and those who continue to be part of the community.”<\/p>\n

According to a former employee, “most of the team” had been let go from the developer.<\/p>\n

“This one really stings as there was a lot of unreleased content I was really looking forward to that I and others designed for Highguard,” former level designer Alex Graner wrote on LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

GamesIndustry.biz <\/em>has contacted Wildlight to confirm how many employees were affected by the layoffs.<\/p>\n

Last month, Wildlight CEO and founder Dusty Welch said he wished Highguard “had been received better”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Welch also addressed the mixed reception of the title’s reveal at The Game Awards<\/a> and the limited marketing prior to its launch on January 27, 2026.<\/p>\n

“I think, ultimately, we could have made a different trailer \u2013 a better trailer that wasn’t about entertaining, which is what we think [The Game Awards] was about,” said Welch.<\/p>\n

“We could have made something that did a better job of highlighting the unique loop of the game. So that’s on us. We take that, but the team is resilient.”<\/p>\n

Wildlight design and creative director Jason McCord added: “The plan was to announce, go dark, and then the next thing we want players to see is the game.<\/p>\n

“If the reception had been totally different, it would have been the same plan. The key is, you’ve got to play the game.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.gamesindustry.biz \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Highguard developer Wildlight Entertainment has laid off an unspecified number of staff.&ZeroWidthSpace; In a statement on social media, the studio announced that a “core group of developers” will remain to support the free-to-play shooter. “We made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2278650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2278649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Wildlight-Entertainment-confirms-layoffs-unknown-number-of-employees-affected.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2278649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2278651,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278649\/revisions\/2278651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2278650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2278649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2278649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2278649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}