Josh Sobel, who was previously a tech artist and rigger on live-service shooter Highguard, posted a prolonged, eye-opening weblog about his time engaged on the free-to-play FPS that has struggled since launching final month on consoles and PC. Sobel additionally talks concerning the response it bought after its reveal and the harassment he suffered.
On February 12 Sobel, a former Wildlight Leisure developer who labored on Highguard for 2 and a half years, shared a post on Twitter containing ideas he says he has been eager to share “for some time.” Within the put up, titled “Reflecting On Transport My First Sport,” Sobel reveals that the day main as much as Highguard‘s massive reveal on the 2025 Sport Awards was “amongst essentially the most thrilling” in his life. “The longer term appeared vibrant,” added the developer. Nonetheless, shortly after its reveal in December, it grew to become clear that wasn’t the case.
“Then the trailer got here out, and it was all downhill from there,” stated Sobel.
“The hate began instantly. Along with dogpiling on the trailer, I personally got here underneath hearth resulting from my naïveté on Twitter, which just about all of my now-former coworkers had realized to keep away from throughout their earlier recreation launches. After setting my Twitter account to personal to guard my sanity, many content material creators made movies and posts about me and my cowardice, amassing thousands and thousands of views and inadvertently sending a whole bunch of indignant players into my replies. They laughed at me for being pleased with the sport, informed me to get out the McDonald’s functions, and mocked me for itemizing having autism in my bio, which they appeared to suppose was proof the sport could be ‘woke trash.’ All of this was very emotionally taxing.”
Sobel admits that there’s loads of “constructive criticism” about how the sport was marketed, however stated he didn’t really feel prefer it was his place to touch upon that and said that there isn’t any method to know if the launch would have been higher or worse with out the Sport Awards reveal. Regardless, after the trailer landed, Sobel says the sport “became a joke from minute one” and blames “false assumptions” about how a lot the trailer’s spot value the studio. It was later revealed that Wildlight didn’t pay something; Sport Awards founder Geoff Keighley simply preferred the sport sufficient to incorporate it.
“Inside minutes, it was determined: this recreation was useless on arrival, and creators now had free ragebait content material for a month. Each one in all our movies on social media bought downvoted to hell. Feedback sections have been flooded with copy/paste meme phrases comparable to ‘Harmony 2‘ and ‘Titanfall 3 died for this.’ At launch, we acquired over 14k evaluation bombs from customers with lower than an hour of playtime. Many didn’t even end the required tutorial.”
The previous Highguard dev didn’t totally blame players for the shooter’s failure, however did recommend that players have a “lot” of energy over what video games succeed and fail.
“I’m not saying our failure is only the fault of gamer tradition and that the sport would have thrived with out the destructive discourse, but it surely completely performed a task. All merchandise are on the whims of the customers, and the customers put absurd quantities of effort into slandering Highguard. And it labored.” Wildlight lately introduced huge layoffs.
“A lot of Wildlight’s former devs will now be pressured to assimilate again into the precise company business many players accused Wildlight of being part of. Now, each time somebody thinks about leaving the golden handcuffs behind in favor of creating a brand new multiplayer recreation the indie means, they’ll say, ‘However bear in mind how players didn’t even give Wildlight an opportunity.’ Quickly, if this sample continues, all that will likely be left are firms, a minimum of within the multiplayer area. Innovation is on life assist.”
Sobel wrapped up his put up by wishing the remaining devs on the studio good luck on Highguard, and saying he believes it may possibly nonetheless succeed. He additionally made it clear that he doesn’t imagine the sport deserved what it bought.
“Even when Highguard had a rocky launch, our unbiased, self-published, dev-led studio stuffed with passionate individuals simply attempting to make a enjoyable recreation, with zero AI, and 0 company oversight, deserved higher than this,” stated Sobel. “We deserved the naked minimal of not having our downfall be gleefully manifested.”
