“Blame the gamers” backfires: Highguard dev’s tirade over reviews and memes draws heavy criticism

Highguard is a free-to-play hero shooter that sees players go up against each other in 3v3 Paladin-like, MOBA combat. Popular streamer Shroud said it gave him “Realm Royale vibes.” While he mentioned he wasn’t completely happy with the product, he hopes that the updates and patches fix some of the issues. “They kinda need to nail it though, cuz like this game’s already starting off on the back foot, like everybody already started hating it before the game came out,” he added, noting that they had limited time to fix things. Shroud’s opinion was much tamer than some of the other opinions on the internet; however, they all had a common theme about the game’s performance and its first impressions. Two weeks after launch, and posted on LinkedIn by a Sr. level designer who had lost his job at the studio, revealed that “most of the team at Wildlight” had been laid off.  

Amongst the louder voices is another popular YouTuber, Asmongold, who labelled the game “Concord 2.” This apparently didn’t sit well with one of the game's developers, Josh Sobel, who, using his X account, wrote a lengthy view of his own experience. 

In what appeared to be an attempt, more or less, at calling out Asmongold, without naming him, Sobel published a piece on his now-deleted account, titled “Reflecting on shipping my first game (Highguard). In the post, he goes on to describe the team’s general attitude before the game’s reveal at The Game Awards, and the reaction they got when Geoff Keighley presented their game in the final spot.  “After 2.5 years of passionately working on Highguard, we were ready to reveal it to the world. The future seemed bright.” He went on to describe how “everyone he knew“ and “internal pre-reveal feedback” from “unbiased sources” had shared similar optimistic sentiments about the game. “But then the trailer came out, and it was all downhill from there.”

“You really think that all of your friends and family are gonna tell you that your games bad? No. They’re gonna look on the bright side, they’re gonna try to see the good things, and they’re gonna try and put a positive spin on it to make you happy.” He asked, responding to Josh’s post. “It’s Toxic positivity,” he added.

In his post, Josh pointed out that content creators often post negative content or ‘ragebait’ to get more engagement and views. Asmongold pointed out that this was a huge fallacy: content creators create content that mirrors popular opinion. “Everybody loves Baldur’s Gate 3, you wanna know how to get views, talk about Baldur’s Gate 3 is good,” he explained, citing multiple examples.

Sobel, following immediately in the footsteps of similar ventures that shifted the blame for their product's failure onto the very people they sought to please, was quick to label any reaction or feedback that didn’t align with their opinions as “hate”. Ranging from comments criticizing their characters, like calling their opening hero Atticus, “John Video Game,” to people posting job applications to McDonalds. “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," Sobel stated, as he continued to lament player responses to the title. 

Asmongold continued to dismantle claims the developer made throughout his video, which, admittedly, was a lot harsher than it needed to be, but that doesn’t negate the truth of what the streamer (and others) had stated. It would be prudent to note that the ferocity of the feedback isn’t just about the game; it’s about how the developers respond to that feedback. After studios started following the ‘blame it on the gamers’ playbook, any bad reaction to similar sentiments against gamers seems likely to be met with harsh backlash.