An ex-Highguard developer has responded to the negativity around the game, warning how “slandering” games without giving them a chance could leave “innovation on life support.” Wildlight Entertainment’s debut effort faced an uphill battle from the start, garnering widespread criticism as soon as it was announced. Now, Highguard faces an uncertain future, and one of its former devs has taken a stand against the hate it’s received.
After its premiere at the 2025 Game Awards, the Highguard reveal trailer quickly drew over 10,000 dislikes on YouTube. Some accused it of paying for its “one last thing” spot at the show, which turned out to be untrue, and many others compared it to the infamously ill-fated hero shooter Concord. Upon release, the game did not fare much better, seeing a wave of negative reviews before many players could spend much time in it, and the title has been trying to fight its way out of this pit of negativity since.
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Ex-Wildlight Dev Says Highguard’s Developers “Deserved Better Than This” Amid Backlash
Josh Sobel, a technical artist who worked on Highguard, posted a lengthy reflection about the game’s reception, calling out gamers for attacking devs and deciding the game’s fate before its release. Sobel was one of the developers impacted by the Highguard studio’s recent layoffs, but his post focused less on these job cuts and more on the vitriol aimed at Highguard and, more importantly, the team behind it. According to Sobel, some content creators mocked him for making his Twitter account private amid the backlash, and some even insulted him for mentioning having autism in his bio. Beyond these personal attacks, the dev commented on how audiences decided Highguard was “dead on arrival” before giving it a fair shot, with many leaving negative reviews without even finishing the tutorial.
Sobel did not claim that all feedback levied against Highguard was unwarranted, and he conceded that it’s impossible to tell if the game would’ve been a success if it hadn’t faced such negativity. However, he warned that “all products are at the whims of the consumers,” and how burying an indie game before giving it a chance to live could hurt future creative choices. It’s a similar sentiment to what other, non-Wildlight devs said when many industry insiders rushed to Highguard‘s defense to decry the celebration of failure.
The former Wildlight developer warned how many indie developers may be scared to try new things in light of how audiences decided Highguard‘s fate so early on. As Sobel points out, this is ironic, as many of the initial criticisms of the Highguard trailer were about it looking too corporate and uninspired, although several reviews pointed out how the game does many things well that other hero shooters don’t. Sobel also highlights how Highguard, while it may have real flaws, was self-published and made without corporate oversight or any AI. Considering how many big gaming companies like EA are pushing for greater AI use, that note about pushing devs back into the corporate way of doing things feels like a strong warning.
Sobel ended the post by saying that, if nothing else, it was unfair to the developers behind the game to attack them on a personal level or celebrate their work’s downfall. He also wished those remaining at Wildlight well and highlighted journalists and creators who did not succumb to the same cycle of negativity for engagement’s sake. As for the game itself, Highguard has gotten some major updates, so it has a chance at winning back fans’ favor as other live-service titles have in the past, but the future is impossible to predict. It remains to be seen if and how Highguard can truly recover.
- Released
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January 26, 2026
- Developer(s)
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Wildlight Entertainment
- Publisher(s)
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Wildlight Entertainment
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
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Full
