Wildlight Entertainment CEO and founder Dusty Welch wished its free-to-play shooter Highguard “had been received better.”

Speaking to PC Gamer following a hands-on event last week, Welch discussed the mixed reception of Highguard’s reveal at The Game Awards, and the lack of marketing prior to its launch yesterday (January 26).

“Part of that’s on us, right? We didn’t put our heads in the sand,” said Welch. “We, as a team, saw the feedback. We’re gamers ourselves. We’re online ourselves reading the feedback.”

“I think, ultimately, we could have made a different trailer – a better trailer that wasn’t about entertaining, which is what we think [The Game Awards] was about. 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.”

Welch noted that Highguard was featured at The Game Awards because its executive producer and host Geoff Keighley wanted to “do something different.”

“Geoff’s a friend of the studio. He came in and he played the game a couple of times, and he loved it,” said Welch.

“So when he said ‘Look, I’d love to do something different and put an indie studio and a free-to-play game up here and put it in the show,’ I mean, as an indie who was unknown by choice, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to do that? Here’s the biggest platform [in gaming], right?”

As for the lack of marketing leading to Highguard’s launch, Wildlight Entertainment design and creative director Jason McCord said this strategy was planned – much in the same vein as Apex Legends back in 2019.

“The plan was to announce, go dark, and then the next thing that we want players to see is the game,” McCord explained. “If the reception had been totally different, it would have been the same plan. The key is, you’ve got to play the game.”

Wildlight Entertainment was co-founded by a group of former Respawn Entertainment devs in 2023. CEO Welch was formerly COO and GM of Apex Legends, and McCord was previously design director on Apex.

The team also includes former Respawn game director Chad Grenier as studio head and game director, in addition to former creative director Mohammad Alavi.