{"id":1765788,"date":"2026-02-13T11:28:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T08:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1765788"},"modified":"2026-02-13T11:28:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T08:28:36","slug":"we-were-turned-into-a-joke-from-minute-one-fired-highguard-developer-reflects-on-games-ill-fated-launch-and-false-assumptions-after-game-awards-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1765788","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;We were turned into a joke from minute one&#8221; &#8211; fired Highguard developer reflects on game&#8217;s ill-fated launch and &#8220;false assumptions&#8221; after Game Awards reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"<article class=\"article \" data-ads=\"true\" data-article-type=\"news\" data-article-group=\"news\" data-paywalled=\"false\" data-premium=\"false\" data-sponsored=\"false\" data-type=\"article\">\n<header class=\"article_header\" data-component=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"breadcrumbs\">\n<nav class=\"nav_breadcrumbs\" data-component=\"nav-breadcrumbs\" aria-label=\"Breadcrumb\">\n<ul class=\"nav-links\">\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      Home<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/news\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      News<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/highguard\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      Highguard<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/nav><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_details\" id=\"main-content\">\n<h1 class=\"title\">&#8220;We were turned into a joke from minute one&#8221; &#8211; fired Highguard developer reflects on game&#8217;s ill-fated launch and &#8220;false assumptions&#8221; after Game Awards reveal<\/h1>\n<p class=\"strapline\">&#8220;The hate started immediately.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_asset\">\n<figure class=\"headline_image_wrapper\">\n<p>        <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"headline_image\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/Screenshot-from-Highguard.jpg?width=570&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;dpr=3&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"Screenshot from Highguard\" loading=\"eager\" data-uri=\"Screenshot-from-Highguard.jpg\" data-lightbox width=\"570\" height=\"321\"><figcaption>\n          <span class=\"attribution\">Image credit: <cite>Wildlight<\/cite><\/span><br \/>\n        <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"metadata\">\n<div class=\"avatar\">\n<p>    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Victoria Phillips Kennedy avatar\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/1644925423.jpg?width=2048&amp;height=2048&amp;fit=bounds&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"180\" height=\"179\"><\/p>\n<p>  <img alt=\"Victoria Phillips Kennedy avatar\" data-autosize=\"crop_lossy\" data-uri=\"1644925423.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"180\" height=\"179\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"text\">\n<div class=\"byline\">\n                  <span class=\"article_type\" data-slug=\"news\"><br \/>\n                    News<br \/>\n                  <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"by\">by<\/span> <span class=\"author\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/authors\/victoria-kennedy\">Victoria Phillips Kennedy<\/a><\/span>                    <span class=\"job_title\"><br \/>\n                      News Reporter<br \/>\n                    <\/span>\n            <\/div>\n<div class=\"published_at\">\nPublished on <time datetime=\"2026-02-13T11:28:36+00:00\">Feb. 13, 2026<\/time>              <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"mypop-header-wrapper\">\n<p><button class=\"mypop-button button wide\" data-state=\"follow\" data-type=\"tag\" data-uuid=\"50adbca5-85d4-4527-8e29-842e617316c0\" data-name=\"Highguard\" data-follow-text=\"Follow Highguard\" data-unfollow-text=\"Following Highguard\" data-aria-follow-text=\"Follow Highguard\" data-aria-unfollow-text=\"Following Highguard\" data-popup=\"true\" data-force-login=\"true\" aria-label=\"Follow Highguard\" title=\"Follow Highguard\"><br \/>\n  Follow Highguard<br \/>\n<\/button>          <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\">\n<p>A former Wildlight developer has shared their thoughts on Highguard&#8217;s release after its announcement at The Game Awards last year, stating due to &#8220;false assumptions&#8221; around its debut trailer, &#8220;we were turned into a joke&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Highguard closed out The Game Awards 2025, with a trailer introducing us all to a world of battling Wardens and their magical mounts. The game then launched in January, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguard-hits-almost-100k-concurrent-pc-players-on-launch-but-struggles-with-early-negative-steam-reviews\">quickly had a large influx of players on its release<\/a>. However, there were a few complaints as well, with many disappointed with areas such as map size and the 3v3 game format. The studio sought to address these issues with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguards-latest-update-includes-new-warden-ekon-who-can-ride-himself-yes-really\">a number of content updates and patches<\/a>, while also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguard-gets-permanent-5v5-mode\">making its once-limited-time 5v5 mode a permanent feature<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Despite this effort to regain favour, though, yesterday it was announced that multiple Wildlight developers had been laid off, only a matter of weeks since Highguard made its free-to-play debut. But according to Highguard&#8217;s former lead technical artist Josh Sobel, the team was doomed from its announcement, and it was &#8220;all downhill&#8221; after the game&#8217;s reveal at the The Game Awards.<\/p>\n<p>Writing in a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Joshiepoo25\/status\/2022003361059631301\">lengthy post on social media<\/a>, Sobel said internal feedback on Highguard prior to its reveal &#8220;was quite positive&#8221;, and the team felt confident it had a hit on its hands. Where feedback was negative, Sobel said, &#8220;it was constructive, and often actionable&#8221;. He added those &#8220;who played the game, including us, had a blast. And since we were an independent, self-published studio built with royalties in mind, many of us were hoping this could finally be the thing that broke the millennial financial curse&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>But that positivity left after its The Game Awards trailer. &#8220;Content creators love to point out the bias in folks who give positive previews after being flown out for an event, but ignore the fact that when their negative-leaning content gets 10x the engagement of the positive, they&#8217;ve got just as much incentive to lean into a disingenuous direction, whether consciously or not,&#8221; Sobel said. &#8220;The hate started immediately.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sobel soon locked his X profile after Highguard&#8217;s trailer, stating videos were then made about his &#8220;cowardice&#8221;, with people laughing at him for &#8220;being proud&#8221; of Highguard. &#8220;All of this was very emotionally taxing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There is much constructive criticism that can be and has been said about Highguard&#8217;s trailer, marketing, and launch, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s my place to commentate on that. I also don&#8217;t think there\u2019s any way to know whether the launch would have fared better or worse without the massive spotlight that was thrown onto us in response to The Game Awards&#8217; trailer placement. But we never got that chance,&#8221; Sobel continued.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Highguard screenshot showing a female character jumping through the air while aiming a large gun with a scope\" height=\"1080\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/highguard-headline_GkemxgH.jpg?width=2048&amp;height=2048&amp;fit=bounds&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1.7777777777777777\" width=\"1920\"><\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Highguard screenshot showing a female character jumping through the air while aiming a large gun with a scope\" data-autosize=\"crop_lossy\" data-lightbox data-uri=\"highguard-headline_GkemxgH.jpg\" height=\"1080\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1.7777777777777777\" width=\"1920\"><figcaption><span class=\"attribution\">Image credit: <cite>Wildlight<\/cite><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;We were turned into a joke from minute one, largely due to false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement, which even prominent journalists soon began to state as fact. 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 &#8216;Concord 2&#8217; and &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/titanfall\">Titanfall<\/a> 3 died for this&#8217;. At launch, we received over 14k review bombs from users with less than an hour of playtime. Many didn&#8217;t even finish the required tutorial.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"2\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sobel remarked that in online discussions about games like Highguard, Concord and 2XKO, people tend to say developers blame their failures on the gamers. However, Sobel says that is a &#8220;silly&#8221; notion, as gamers still have the power to inform discourse.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not saying our failure is purely the fault of gamer culture and that the game would have thrived without the negative discourse, but it absolutely played a role,&#8221; Sobel said. &#8220;All products are at the whims of the consumers, and the consumers put absurd amounts of effort into slandering Highguard. And it worked.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There is no denying the sting and hurt in Sobel words, but while he may sound bitter about how things have ultimately panned out, it is undeniably a shame to see a game stumble out of the starting gate. To be clear, Highguard itself has not been shut down, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguard-not-shutting-down-following-wildlight-layoffs-with-a-core-group-of-members-left-to-support-game\">with a &#8220;core group&#8221; of developers still working on it<\/a>. For how much longer, who can say. But whatever the end result, it is never nice to see a game &#8216;fail&#8217;, and hear about layoffs across the industry.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Highguard characters facing camera.\" height=\"1080\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/highguard-steam-headline-1.jpg?width=2048&amp;height=2048&amp;fit=bounds&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1.7777777777777777\" width=\"1920\"><\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Highguard characters facing camera.\" data-autosize=\"crop_lossy\" data-lightbox data-uri=\"highguard-steam-headline-1.jpg\" height=\"1080\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1.7777777777777777\" width=\"1920\"><figcaption><span class=\"attribution\">Image credit: <cite>Wildlight Entertainment<\/cite><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As for Sobel, he said that &#8220;even though this adventure has come to an abrupt and emotionally challenging close&#8221; for him, he doesn&#8217;t &#8220;regret one second of it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Following its rocky debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguard-developers-defend-as-complaints-pile-up\">other developers across the industry also voiced their support for Highguard<\/a>, with Splitgate: Arena Reloaded studio 1047 Games stating:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No game is perfect on day one.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"preferred-source\" data-component=\"preferred-source\">\nLove Eurogamer.net? Make us a <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\">Preferred Source on Google<\/a> and catch more of our coverage in your feeds.  <\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\">\n<p>A former Wildlight developer has shared their thoughts on Highguard&#8217;s release after its announcement at The Game Awards last year, stating due to &#8220;false assumptions&#8221; around its debut trailer, &#8220;we were turned into a joke&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Highguard closed out The Game Awards 2025, with a trailer introducing us all to a world of battling Wardens and their magical mounts. The game then launched in January, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguard-hits-almost-100k-concurrent-pc-players-on-launch-but-struggles-with-early-negative-steam-reviews\">quickly had a large influx of players on its release<\/a>. However, there were a few complaints as well, with many disappointed with areas such as map size and the 3v3 game format. The studio sought to address these issues with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguards-latest-update-includes-new-warden-ekon-who-can-ride-himself-yes-really\">a number of content updates and patches<\/a>, while also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguard-gets-permanent-5v5-mode\">making its once-limited-time 5v5 mode a permanent feature<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Despite this effort to regain favour, though, yesterday it was announced that multiple Wildlight developers had been laid off, only a matter of weeks since Highguard made its free-to-play debut. But according to Highguard&#8217;s former lead technical artist Josh Sobel, the team was doomed from its announcement, and it was &#8220;all downhill&#8221; after the game&#8217;s reveal at the The Game Awards.<\/p>\n<p>Writing in a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Joshiepoo25\/status\/2022003361059631301\">lengthy post on social media<\/a>, Sobel said internal feedback on Highguard prior to its reveal &#8220;was quite positive&#8221;, and the team felt confident it had a hit on its hands. Where feedback was negative, Sobel said, &#8220;it was constructive, and often actionable&#8221;. He added those &#8220;who played the game, including us, had a blast. And since we were an independent, self-published studio built with royalties in mind, many of us were hoping this could finally be the thing that broke the millennial financial curse&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>But that positivity left after its The Game Awards trailer. &#8220;Content creators love to point out the bias in folks who give positive previews after being flown out for an event, but ignore the fact that when their negative-leaning content gets 10x the engagement of the positive, they&#8217;ve got just as much incentive to lean into a disingenuous direction, whether consciously or not,&#8221; Sobel said. &#8220;The hate started immediately.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sobel soon locked his X profile after Highguard&#8217;s trailer, stating videos were then made about his &#8220;cowardice&#8221;, with people laughing at him for &#8220;being proud&#8221; of Highguard. &#8220;All of this was very emotionally taxing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There is much constructive criticism that can be and has been said about Highguard&#8217;s trailer, marketing, and launch, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s my place to commentate on that. I also don&#8217;t think there\u2019s any way to know whether the launch would have fared better or worse without the massive spotlight that was thrown onto us in response to The Game Awards&#8217; trailer placement. But we never got that chance,&#8221; Sobel continued.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Highguard screenshot showing a female character jumping through the air while aiming a large gun with a scope\" height=\"1080\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/highguard-headline_GkemxgH.jpg?width=2048&amp;height=2048&amp;fit=bounds&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1.7777777777777777\" width=\"1920\"><\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Highguard screenshot showing a female character jumping through the air while aiming a large gun with a scope\" data-autosize=\"crop_lossy\" data-lightbox data-uri=\"highguard-headline_GkemxgH.jpg\" height=\"1080\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1.7777777777777777\" width=\"1920\"><figcaption><span class=\"attribution\">Image credit: <cite>Wildlight<\/cite><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;We were turned into a joke from minute one, largely due to false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement, which even prominent journalists soon began to state as fact. 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 &#8216;Concord 2&#8217; and &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/titanfall\">Titanfall<\/a> 3 died for this&#8217;. At launch, we received over 14k review bombs from users with less than an hour of playtime. Many didn&#8217;t even finish the required tutorial.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"2\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sobel remarked that in online discussions about games like Highguard, Concord and 2XKO, people tend to say developers blame their failures on the gamers. However, Sobel says that is a &#8220;silly&#8221; notion, as gamers still have the power to inform discourse.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not saying our failure is purely the fault of gamer culture and that the game would have thrived without the negative discourse, but it absolutely played a role,&#8221; Sobel said. &#8220;All products are at the whims of the consumers, and the consumers put absurd amounts of effort into slandering Highguard. And it worked.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There is no denying the sting and hurt in Sobel words, but while he may sound bitter about how things have ultimately panned out, it is undeniably a shame to see a game stumble out of the starting gate. To be clear, Highguard itself has not been shut down, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguard-not-shutting-down-following-wildlight-layoffs-with-a-core-group-of-members-left-to-support-game\">with a &#8220;core group&#8221; of developers still working on it<\/a>. For how much longer, who can say. But whatever the end result, it is never nice to see a game &#8216;fail&#8217;, and hear about layoffs across the industry.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Highguard characters facing camera.\" height=\"1080\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/highguard-steam-headline-1.jpg?width=2048&amp;height=2048&amp;fit=bounds&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1.7777777777777777\" width=\"1920\"><\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Highguard characters facing camera.\" data-autosize=\"crop_lossy\" data-lightbox data-uri=\"highguard-steam-headline-1.jpg\" height=\"1080\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1.7777777777777777\" width=\"1920\"><figcaption><span class=\"attribution\">Image credit: <cite>Wildlight Entertainment<\/cite><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As for Sobel, he said that &#8220;even though this adventure has come to an abrupt and emotionally challenging close&#8221; for him, he doesn&#8217;t &#8220;regret one second of it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Following its rocky debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/highguard-developers-defend-as-complaints-pile-up\">other developers across the industry also voiced their support for Highguard<\/a>, with Splitgate: Arena Reloaded studio 1047 Games stating:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No game is perfect on day one.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Home News Highguard &#8220;We were turned into a joke from minute one&#8221; &#8211; fired Highguard developer reflects on game&#8217;s ill-fated launch and &#8220;false assumptions&#8221; after Game Awards reveal &#8220;The hate started immediately.&#8221; Image credit: Wildlight News by Victoria Phillips Kennedy News Reporter Published on Feb. 13, 2026 Follow Highguard A former Wildlight developer has shared [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,253],"class_list":["post-1765788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-eurogamer-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1765788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1765788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1765788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1765788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}