Highguard Steam charts and player count: Has it beaten Concord?

After a bizarre marketing campaign that saw a reveal video at The Game Awards 2025 and not much else, we’ll be taking a look at the Highguard Steam charts and player count, and look to see if the elusive PvP shooter has beaten Concord.

If anything, Geoff Keighley was certainly very excited for it, but many gamers have quite strong opinions on the veteran journalist and host's tastes, as immortalised by X (formerly Twitter) user Hatty_ (preserved by Nintendo out of Context).

In regard to Concord, ever since its demise, there has been a general malaise when it comes to online games, as the market became saturated with them as publishers scrambled to chase after Fortnite’s success.

With that in mind, Highguard was always going to be up against it. But can it weather the storm? Read on!

Highguard Steam charts and player count: Is it a hit?

Highguard reached a peak player count of 97,249 according to Steam DB.

Whilst this seems like a fairly strong number for a game that has just released, as of writing, it has dipped down to 11,128. The peak player count was down by half at 11 PM GMT, just five hours after the game launched.

As for whether Highguard is a hit, well, you could say it hit the ground with a bit of a thud.

Currently, Highguard has a Mostly Negative rating on Steam, based on around 15,000 reviews. There was much ill-will towards the game on social media, and so many of these might just be in bad faith, but there is valid criticism, such as from Steam user Swervey 'Ascoobis' Doo, who wrote after 6 hours of play that "above all the game is boring," adding that "there are no NPCs to populate the maps, meaning the only engagment with the maps is looting extremely surface level loot".

Later, they edited the article to include a follow-up, saying: “I went back to see if I was being unfair, and no I was not. This is actually one of, if not the most dull multiplayer PvP game I have ever played. It got to a point where I was begging for my last game to end.”

Suffice to say, whilst Highguard might be down at the moment, it certainly isn’t out. It’s only natural for the player count to drop as it gets later on in the day, especially on a Monday evening when many of us would be recovering from a first day back at work after the weekend.

By all accounts, when compared to Concord, Highguard is a smashing success, as Firewalk Studios’ ill-fated PvP shooter only reached a peak player count of 697 according to Steam DB.

However, Highguard hasn’t reached the kind of numbers achieved by other recent online titles, such as Marvel Rivals, which peaked at 644,269 players shortly after it launched.

Apex Legends, which many Wildlight Entertainment developers had worked on, reached a 24-hour peak player count of 168,512, as of writing, which is slightly lower than the usual 180,000 or so it manages.

Certainly, the signs are not good for Highguard, but we currently have no insight into how many are playing the game on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S.

As Highguard supports cross-play, it could manage to nurture a large enough pool of players to sustain itself, but this remains to be seen.

Hopefully, Highguard can improve its standing with players and grow into a success, but with more games coming out all the time, the competition for players’ attention is fierce.

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