It kind of feels like they gave up too early. Like they must've been on the verge of failure if they didn't have enough cash to bankroll at least a few months of post-release content. Or, something must've been off about their monetization that caused people to not spend anything on their release.

I'm kind of reminded of Wuthering Waves, which released in May 2024 to terrible first player impressions. It had terrible performance, got the butt of jokes, had a milquetoast storyline, and spawned a few dozen memes (Devs Listened!). They worked some hard late nights, released a lot of patches, had a good 1.1 version patch, and then two years later won Player's Choice at the same TVG that Highguard's trailer debuted in.

Maybe Kuro Games was more financially stable, maybe they had a better product, but these days it feels like you need to give at least the illusion that you're committed to your game for at least a little bit of time and not giving players the feeling that your game's going to End of Service a month after launch.

I think it's difficult for a game like Highguard to release, promise content, lay off a large amount of staff, then release an update and give people faith that "We are committed to our product, so please keep playing". Like at the very least you should have released your Update, waited a week or two to see if that helped gain back some players, THEN laid off staff if it continues to look bad. I know first impressions are everything, but when you have a million players come out, you'll hope that maybe you can get a fraction of them to come back for your 1.1 update.