{"id":597951,"date":"2026-02-18T05:34:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T05:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/597951\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T05:34:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T05:34:21","slug":"highguards-mysterious-funding-reportedly-came-from-tencent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/597951\/","title":{"rendered":"Highguard’s Mysterious Funding Reportedly Came From Tencent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Developers at Wildlight Entertainment were very open about Highguard\u2018s development<\/a> 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\u2019s come out that the source of funding for the hero shooter\u2019s four-year development cycle may have been Chinese conglomerate Tencent.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to a new report by Game File<\/a>. It claims Tencent studio group\u00a0TiMi, responsible for online hits like Honor of Kings and military multiplayer shooter Delta Force, is the one backing Wildlight Entertainment.<\/p>\n

Wildlight was cofounded by ex-Respawn Entertainment veterans<\/a> 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\u2019s funding last month by Bloomberg<\/a>, CEO Dusty Welch said, \u201cWe don\u2019t really speak publicly about the business, and the economics and the financials of our company.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Game File points out, it\u2019s unclear why the relationship has been kept secret. Tencent is no stranger to investing in Western game studios<\/a> 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\u2019s case, TiMi appears to have been the primary backer.<\/p>\n

Questions about the funding have taken center stage following Wildlight\u2019s layoffs last week and fan questions about just how much longer the live-service game Highguard can continue<\/a> in its current state. It\u2019s lost over 95 percent of concurrent players on PC from its peak at launch, even as an unknown pool continues to play on console.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t stick around. Wildlight has yet to update players on the game\u2019s revised roadmap or future plans and today, Highguard\u2018s official website was discovered to have been taken offline<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Developers at Wildlight Entertainment were very open about Highguard\u2018s development back when it launched last month. Everything except…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":597952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[232671,158,78939,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-597951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-highguard","tag-technology","tag-tencent","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116090009471167126","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}