Final week, lately laid off Highguard developer Josh Sobel opened up about what it felt like revealing the sport at the Game Awards 2025 after which watching among the loudest components of the web dunk on the sport up by its January launch. One of many issues he referred to as out was folks “gleefully” trying to manifest the web hero shooter’s quick downfall. The response to his earnest inside take a look at having labored on the sport was instantly greeted by such a harsh and poisonous backlash he’s now deleted the publish in addition to the remainder of his account.
“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,” Sobel wrote on X on February 12, simply days after Wildlight Leisure announced sweeping staff cuts.
The publish kicked off a contemporary firestorm from a diffuse mob of indignant on-line avid gamers and social media clout chasers who used the message to assault Highguard‘s developers as out of touch. They were accused of trying to deflect blame for making a game that just didn’t join with many gamers. As occurred with Harmony earlier than it, some folks began in search of any publish by anyone who labored on Highguard that they may discover to start out dunking on the particular person and the sport.
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Josh Sobel has now deleted his X account completely, simply days after publishing an article blaming avid gamers for Highguard’s failure.
Seems just like the deflection didn’t land the best way he anticipated. https://t.co/IQCneqclUm pic.twitter.com/faxHwewyK4
— MasteroftheTDS (@MasteroftheTDS) February 15, 2026
Look, just a few various things might be true right here at identical time. In response to the data firm Ampere Analysis, an estimated 1.54 million folks performed Highguard final month. That’s round what Palworld hit when it launched. In different phrases, tons of individuals tried Highguard after which didn’t come again. That already makes it utterly completely different from the apathy bomb Harmony launched into. It additionally means that regardless of regardless of all of the folks making an attempt to “manifest” failure on social media, Highguard had its shot to discover a massive viewers and simply couldn’t capitalize.
Nevertheless it’s additionally true that no matter whether or not it had any impression on preliminary downloads and playtime, anybody who paid consideration to Highguard in any respect throughout it’s launch would have although the builders had marketed the sport by dropping kittens off rooftops. Hundreds of unfavorable opinions by individuals who barely performed a single match did get posted to Steam and loads of folks on-line have been jonesing for a “Concord 2.0” flameout.
Even if you happen to assume Sobel’s argument that a man-made gravity effectively of bad-faith negativity harm the sport is fallacious, it nonetheless sucks that it occurred. It’s additionally, frankly, weird. One other ignored level made by the developer who, bear in mind, had simply misplaced his job engaged on his dream sport, was that Wildlight Leisure was not some mega writer chasing market suits on a spreadsheet. Highguard was not a stay service sport designed in a lab by Excel.
Not each sport can succeed. Even nice ones fail. However you’ll be able to’t champion risk-taking in game development whereas additionally partaking in witch hunts towards folks only for inserting bets you don’t like.
