Quick quiz: what PvP raid shooter from the creators of Apex Legends and Titanfall launches in one week?

If you said "wait, what?", congratulations - you're in the same boat as 99% of gamers.

Highguard, a fantasy-meets-gunslinger PvP game, drops on January 26. That's seven days from now. And the only person who seems to remember it exists is Geoff Keighley, who personally booked the game's spot at The Game Awards in December.

Here's where it gets weird: the developers have been completely silent since that reveal. Their last Twitter post about Highguard was December 12. No gameplay breakdowns, no deep dives, no influencer campaigns, no preview events. Just... nothing.

For a game launching in a week, this is either the boldest marketing strategy ever or a sign that something went very, very wrong behind the scenes.

Some people think it's trying to copy Valve's Deadlock mystery marketing - you know, the invite-only hype machine that got everyone talking by explicitly not talking about it. But here's the difference: Deadlock wasn't formally announced. It was a leak that Valve leaned into. Highguard had a full Game Awards reveal and then went dark. That's not mystery marketing. That's just... silence.

The Concord comparisons are already starting, and that's brutal. Sony's hero shooter launched to disastrous player counts and shut down in two weeks. If Highguard follows that trajectory - a big reveal followed by total radio silence and a dead-on-arrival launch - we're looking at another cautionary tale about live service shooters that nobody asked for.

And look, the PvP extraction shooter market is insanely competitive right now. You've got Escape From Tarkov, Hunt: Showdown, The Cycle (oh wait, that one shut down), and a dozen others fighting for players. Breaking into that space requires relentless marketing, community building, and content creator support.

Highguard has none of that.

Maybe there's a last-minute marketing blitz coming this week. Maybe the developers have some 4D chess strategy we're not seeing. Or maybe this is just what happens when a game gets announced before it's ready to actually, you know, be marketed.

Either way, launching a competitive multiplayer game that requires a healthy player base while doing zero community outreach is a bold choice. And by "bold," I mean "potentially catastrophic."

Verdict: Would I speedrun this? Hard to speedrun a PvP game. Harder when the lobbies are empty.