Highguard dev blames content creators for the game's failure - "It was dead on arrival"

Excitement around Highguard was strong ahead of launch, mainly because the development team included people who had previously worked on Apex Legends and Titanfall. When the game launched, its initial player numbers were solid, but that momentum didn’t last. Within a day, the game lost the majority of its player base and failed to recover. The situation worsened last night, when reports surfaced that Wildlight Entertainment, the studio behind the game, had laid off most of its staff.

Now, Josh Sobel, the former Lead Tech Artist at Wildlight, has shared his thoughts on what went wrong. In a long post on X, Sobel spoke openly about the game’s journey and placed much of the blame on content creators and the online culture surrounding the launch.

According to Sobel, the period leading up to The Game Awards 2025 was one of the most exciting times of his life. After more than two years of work on Highguard, the team believed they had something special. Internal feedback was very positive, even from people outside the studio. Many believed the game had mainstream potential and felt confident it would succeed.

However, that optimism quickly collapsed after the reveal trailer went live. Sobel says negative reactions started almost immediately. He mentioned that while content creators often criticize overly positive previews, negative coverage tends to generate far more engagement. As a result, he believes many creators leaned heavily into criticism, turning Highguard into an easy target for rage-driven content.

"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."

Sobel also claimed he received heavy backlash on social media, due to which he had to make his account private to protect his mental health. He says this only made things worse, as some creators mocked him publicly, drawing even more harassment his way. 

He acknowledges that Highguard had issues and that constructive criticism was valid. However, he believes the game was labeled a failure before it ever had a fair chance, and that review bombing, memes flooding comment sections, and thousands of negative reviews from players who barely played the game crushed any chance of recovery. 

"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 says this outcome sends a warning to other independent developers. According to him, if this pattern continues, fewer teams will risk making multiplayer games outside large corporations.