There’s no doubting that Highguard got off to a rough start in its release into the free-to-play shooter world, but Wildlight Entertainment is already hard at work on bringing the game up to snuff.
Highguard’s first post-launch update is now live, including some fixes for some top complaints that players have had in the three days since the game released into the wild. With the discussion around it being mostly negative, Highguard has an uphill battle to try and win over some players, and this patch looks to be a first step.
Here’s everything that’s changed in Highguard with the Jan. 28 update.
Highguard patch notes – Jan. 29, 2026
The first post-launch update for Highguard focuses on some important quality of life changes, such as control scheme options on PC, an FOV option for console, and more.
Game Input Settings
- Added the ability to set Crouch to Hold or Toggle for all platforms.
- Added the ability to set Aim Down Sights to Hold or Toggle for PC only (for now).
Toggling into ADS then tapping Sprint (shift on PC, left stick on controller) will swap your scope. This is disorienting on controller. PC players are recommended to rebind scope swap if using Toggle ADS. We will continue to look into adding this for console players who canโt rebind buttons yet, but we will need more time.
Video Settings
- Console users can now adjust FoV to 110.
- Low scalability settings for shadows and reflections are tuned for even more performance at the cost of some image quality.
- Low shadow setting now also disables volumetric fog.
- Added a new “View Distance Quality” setting that controls skeletal mesh LODs, which can be another useful control to tune GPU and CPU usage.
Players now have the ability to toggle the following features on or off, irrespective of other quality options:
- Anisotropic Materials
- Chromatic Aberration
- Bloom
Motion Blur and Depth of Field need more testing to disable safely. Look for these options very soon.
- DLSS users now have the ability to select a DLSS preset. More presets and better descriptions are coming in the next patch.
- Players can now select Off to disable Global Illumination entirely.
- Resolved an engine bug which could inadvertently throttled laptop users to 60 FPS regardless of frame rate settings.
Crash and Bug Fixes
This patch resolves crashes that could occur in the following scenarios
- Leaving a match on PS5 with an unexpected input state.
- Loading into matches on machines with slower storage devices.
A number of other bugs related to online user presence and matchmaking were also resolved.
- Friends now appear online correctly after accepting requests, and Xbox presence updates properly. Major crash fixes have reduced crashes by 90%, significantly improving stability.
- Friend status is fixed – players now appear online correctly and Xbox presence updates reliably. Our top crash issues are gone, resulting in a 90% crash reduction.
In addition to today’s patch, Wildlight creative director Jason McCord said that the devs have “already started on the optimization patch that should be out by the end of the week…along with other fun things.”
If you’re looking for more info on Highguard, check out more of Destructoid’s coverage below:
