Final week, not too long ago laid off Highguard developer Josh Sobel opened up about what it felt like revealing the sport on the Sport Awards 2025 after which watching a number of the loudest components of the web dunk on the sport up via its January launch. One of many issues he referred to as out was individuals “gleefully” making an attempt 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 put up in addition to the remainder of his account.
“I’m not saying our failure is solely the fault of gamer tradition and that the sport would have thrived with out the destructive discourse, however it completely performed a task. All merchandise are on the whims of the shoppers, and the shoppers put absurd quantities of effort into slandering Highguard. And it labored,” Sobel wrote on X on February 12, simply days after Wildlight Leisure introduced sweeping workers cuts.
The put up kicked off a contemporary firestorm from a diffuse mob of offended on-line players and social media clout chasers who used the message to assault Highguard‘s builders as out of contact. They had been accused of making an attempt to deflect blame for making a recreation that simply didn’t join with many gamers. As occurred with Harmony earlier than it, some individuals began searching for any put up by anyone who labored on Highguard that they might discover to begin dunking on the particular person and the sport.
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Josh Sobel has now deleted his X account totally, simply days after publishing an article blaming players 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, a couple of various things could be true right here at identical time. In line with the data firm Ampere Analysis, an estimated 1.54 million individuals 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 fully totally different from the apathy bomb Harmony launched into. It additionally means that regardless of regardless of all of the individuals making an attempt to “manifest” failure on social media, Highguard had its shot to discover a massive viewers and simply couldn’t capitalize.
But it surely’s additionally true that no matter whether or not it had any affect 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. 1000’s of destructive critiques by individuals who barely performed a single match did get posted to Steam and loads of individuals on-line had been jonesing for a “Harmony 2.0” flameout.
Even when you assume Sobel’s argument that a man-made gravity nicely of bad-faith negativity harm the sport is fallacious, it nonetheless sucks that it occurred. It’s additionally, frankly, weird. One other missed level made by the developer who, bear in mind, had simply misplaced his job engaged on his dream recreation, was that Wildlight Leisure was not some mega writer chasing market matches on a spreadsheet. Highguard was not a stay service recreation designed in a lab by Excel.
Not each recreation can succeed. Even nice ones fail. However you may’t champion risk-taking in recreation growth whereas additionally partaking in witch hunts towards individuals only for putting bets you don’t like.
