Developers at Wildlight Entertainment were very open about Highguard‘s development back when it launched last month. Everything except where the money to make it came from. A week after mass layoffs at the studio, it’s come out that the source of funding for the hero shooter’s four-year development cycle may have been Chinese conglomerate Tencent.
That’s according to a new report by Game File. It claims Tencent studio group TiMi, responsible for online hits like Honor of Kings and military multiplayer shooter Delta Force, is the one backing Wildlight Entertainment.
Wildlight was cofounded by ex-Respawn Entertainment veterans who worked on Titanfall and Apex Legends. But unlike many recent startups which happily publicize their investment backers, Wildlight has kept that fact a secret. When pressed about the studio’s funding last month by Bloomberg, CEO Dusty Welch said, “We don’t really speak publicly about the business, and the economics and the financials of our company.”
As Game File points out, it’s unclear why the relationship has been kept secret. Tencent is no stranger to investing in Western game studios and companies. It has billions in holdings across companies big and small, from Larian Studios and FromSoftware to Epic Games and Ubisoft. Usually these are just partial financial stakes. In Wildlight’s case, TiMi appears to have been the primary backer.
Questions about the funding have taken center stage following Wildlight’s layoffs last week and fan questions about just how much longer the live-service game Highguard can continue in its current state. It’s lost over 95 percent of concurrent players on PC from its peak at launch, even as an unknown pool continues to play on console.
As a free-to-play shooter, its revenue comes entirely from in-game microtransactions for skins and battle passes, things players are much less likely to buy when they think a game won’t stick around. Wildlight has yet to update players on the game’s revised roadmap or future plans and today, Highguard‘s official website was discovered to have been taken offline.
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