Sony Is Automatically Refunding Highguard Players Who Spent Real Money

Six weeks. That's all Highguard got.

The free-to-play hero shooter from Wildlight Entertainment launched on 26 January 2026, nearly peaked at 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, and then... fell off a cliff. The studio laid off most of its team shortly after launch, announced the game would permanently shut down on 12 March, and now appears to have gone dark entirely, with its website offline and its LinkedIn page deleted.

Now Sony is stepping in to clean up the mess.

PlayStation players who spent money on in-game content, things like cosmetics, skins, and the battle pass, are receiving automatic refunds from Sony without even asking for one. The refunds started rolling out on 17 March, arriving via email and account notifications. One player put it well on Reddit: "I honestly didn't care for a refund. I enjoyed the game and enjoyed supporting it, but if you were looking for a refund, they are sending them out."

Worth noting: this appears to be a PlayStation-only thing right now. No similar reports have come from Steam or Xbox players. Given that Sony's refund policy is notoriously tight compared to Steam, the fact that they're proactively returning money here is actually pretty surprising.

It's drawing obvious comparisons to Concord, another Sony-backed live-service title that shut down rapidly after launch. Firewalk Studios, the developer behind that game, was also eventually closed. The situations rhyme in uncomfortable ways.

As for Wildlight, the studio's fate looks sealed. Founder and director Chad Grenier has updated his LinkedIn to show his time at Wildlight ending in March 2026. There's no official closure announcement, but all the signs point the same way.

If you bought anything in Highguard on PS5, check your inbox. Your money should be on its way back.