A developer who worked on Highguard has discussed the “hate” he received after the free-to-play shooter debuted at December’s The Game Awards, saying the game, and by extension its team, “turned into a joke from minute one, largely due to false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement.”
Just two weeks after the free-to-play game’s January 26 launch, yesterday Wildlight let go all but a “core group of developers” despite the newly unveiled Episode 2, and despite debuting in the top 10 in weekly active users on US Steam, and the top 20 on both US PlayStation and Xbox.
Now, in a candid statement posted to X/Twitter, tech artist and rigger Josh Sobel — who was one of those let go — talked about the impact of the launch on himself and the wellbeing of the entire team.
“The day leading to The Game Awards 2025 was amongst the most exciting of my life. After 2.5yrs of passionately working on Highguard, we were ready to reveal it to the world. The future seemed bright. Everyone I knew who had any connection to the team or project had the same [positive] sentiments,” he wrote, adding that “unbiased” internal pre-reveal feedback was “quite positive,” and when it was negative, “it was constructive, and often actionable.”
“But then the trailer came out, and it was all downhill from there,” Sobel added. “Content creators love to point out the bias in folks who give positive previews after being flown out for an event, but ignore the fact that when their negative-leaning content gets 10x the engagement of the positive, they’ve got just as much incentive to lean into a disingenuous direction, whether consciously or not.
“The hate started immediately. In addition to dogpiling on the trailer, I personally came under fire due to my naïveté on Twitter, which almost all of my now-former coworkers had learned to avoid during their previous game launches,” he explained. “After setting my Twitter account to private to protect my sanity, many content creators made videos and posts about me and my cowardice, amassing millions of views and inadvertently sending hundreds of angry gamers into my replies. They laughed at me for being proud of the game, told me to get out the McDonald’s applications, and mocked me for listing having autism in my bio, which they seemed to think was evidence the game would be ‘woke trash.’ All of this was very emotionally taxing.”
Sobel acknowledged that there’s “much constructive criticism” about Highguard’s trailer, marketing, and launch, but also isn’t sure if things would’ve been any better had the game not been announced at The Game Awards.
“We were turned into a joke from minute one, largely due to false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement, which even prominent journalists soon began to state as fact,” Sobel said. “Within minutes, it was decided: this game was dead on arrival, and creators now had free ragebait content for a month. Every one of our videos on social media got downvoted to hell. Comments sections were flooded with copy/paste meme phrases such as ‘Concord 2’ and ‘Titanfall 3 died for this.’ At launch, we received over 14k review bombs from users with less than an hour of playtime. Many didn’t even finish the required tutorial.
“In discussions online about Highguard, [Sony’s troubled live-service shooter] Concord, [Riot’s recently launched] 2XKO, and such, it is often pointed out by gamers that devs like to blame gamers for their failures, and that that’s silly. As if gamers have no power. But they do. A lot of it. I’m not saying our failure is purely the fault of gamer culture and that the game would have thrived without the negative discourse, but it absolutely played a role. All products are at the whims of the consumers, and the consumers put absurd amounts of effort into slandering Highguard. And it worked.”
As a consequence of this, Sobel said many of Highguard’s hitherto independent team will “now be forced” to return to the corporate industry “many gamers accused Wildlight of being a part of.”
“If this pattern continues, all that will be left are corporations, at least in the multiplayer space. Innovation is on life support,” he added. “Even if Highguard had a rocky launch, our independent, self-published, dev-led studio full of passionate people just trying to make a fun game, with zero AI, and zero corporate oversight…deserved better than this. We deserved the bare minimum of not having our downfall be gleefully manifested.”
Sobel finished on wishing the colleagues that remain at Wildlight “the best of luck,” and thanked a slew of “incredibly supportive journalists and creators” for their “empathy, intuition, and integrity.”
“Some of the best times of my life were spent with [the techart team],” he concluded.
A number of high-profile video game developers defended Highguard following the online backlash during the game’s launch. Developers from the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3 studio Larian, as well as Fortnite maker Epic, have hit out at the discourse surrounding Highguard, and the internet’s capacity to “hate” on video games at launch. Developers like Cliff Bleszinski of Gears of War fame, Epic executive Mark Rein, and Larian boss Swen Vincke spoke up against, in particular, negativity from critics.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
