Ex-Highguard Dev Warns Gamer Culture Puts "Innovation on Life Support" After Mass Layoffs

Highguard's troubled launch just got worse. Most of Wildlight Entertainment's team got the axe on 11 February, barely two weeks after the free-to-play shooter dropped. Now one of those laid-off developers is pushing back hard against what he calls a toxic wave of negativity that crushed the game before most players even tried it properly.

Josh Sobel spent two and a half years as lead technical artist on Highguard. His lengthy reflection pulls no punches about what went wrong after the game's December reveal at The Game Awards 2025.

The day before that reveal? Pure excitement. Sobel says internal feedback had been positive across the board. People who played Highguard loved it. The team thought they had something special, maybe even a mainstream hit. Several industry contacts told them there was no way this would flop.

Then the trailer dropped in the coveted final spot of The Game Awards. Everything changed.

Turned Into a Joke From Minute One

"The hate started immediately" Sobel wrote. Personal attacks flooded in alongside criticism of the game itself. After he made his Twitter account private to protect his mental health, content creators made videos mocking him for "cowardice." Some even targeted him for mentioning autism in his bio, calling it evidence the game would be "woke trash."

The backlash went beyond typical criticism. Highguard was immediately branded "Concord 2" and declared dead on arrival. False rumours spread that Wildlight paid a million dollars for the Game Awards spot. Game Awards host Geoff Keighley reportedly gave them the slot for free because he genuinely liked the game.

Comments flooded social media with copy-paste phrases like "Titanfall 3 died for this." Every video from Wildlight got downvoted into oblivion.

When Highguard launched on 26 January, the review bombs kept coming. Over 14,000 negative reviews hit Steam from users with less than an hour of playtime. Many hadn't even finished the required tutorial.

Sobel isn't claiming Highguard was perfect or that gamer culture alone killed it. He acknowledges the trailer could have been better and that there were legitimate criticisms buried beneath the toxicity. But he firmly believes the relentless negativity played a major role.

"All products are at the whims of the consumers, and the consumers put absurd amounts of effort into slandering Highguard," he explained. "And it worked."

The Bigger Picture for Indie Studios

The situation stings worse because Wildlight was exactly what many gamers claim to want. An independent, self-published studio full of passionate developers making games without corporate oversight. No AI shortcuts. No big publisher breathing down their necks. Just about 100 employees, many of whom previously worked on Apex Legends and Titanfall at Respawn Entertainment.

Now those developers are being forced back into corporate jobs. Sobel says this sets a dangerous precedent.

"Every time someone thinks about leaving the golden handcuffs behind in favour of making a new multiplayer game the indie way, they'll say 'but remember how gamers didn't even give Wildlight a chance.'"

His warning is blunt. "Soon, if this pattern continues, all that will be left are corporations, at least in the multiplayer space. Innovation is on life support."

The irony cuts deep. Initial criticisms of Highguard focused on it looking too corporate and uninspired. Yet several reviews pointed out the game did many things well that other hero shooters didn't.

Wildlight tried adapting quickly after launch. Within the first week, they added a permanent 5v5 mode after feedback about the 3v3 format. Studio head Chad Grenier told Polygon before the layoffs that player counts didn't matter as much as making something the community loved.

That optimism didn't last. Most of the team got cut just over two weeks post-launch. A skeleton crew remains to maintain the game.

Marketing Mistakes and Harsh Lessons

Wildlight's CEO Dusty Welch admitted to PC Gamer that the team rushed the Game Awards trailer together. The original plan was a shadow drop similar to Apex Legends. When Keighley offered the high-profile spot, they pivoted.

"We could have made a different trailer, a better trailer that wasn't about entertaining," Welch said. "We could have made something that did a better job of highlighting the unique loop of the game. That's on us."

The team then went radio silent for nearly two months between announcement and launch. No marketing push. No gameplay breakdowns. Nothing to counter the mounting negativity. They wanted the game to speak for itself when it finally arrived.

Sobel doesn't entirely blame the marketing approach, though. He points out there's no way to know if things would have gone differently with a better strategy. The internet decided Highguard's fate within minutes of that first trailer.

He wrapped his reflection by saying the team deserved better. Not blind praise or guaranteed success, but at minimum, not having their downfall gleefully manifested by people who never gave the game a fair shot.

"Even if Highguard had a rocky launch, our independent, self-published, dev-led studio full of passionate people just trying to make a fun game, with zero AI, and zero corporate oversight, deserved better than this."

The few remaining developers at Wildlight continue supporting Highguard. Sobel says he still believes in the game and so do the fans they reached. Whether that's enough to turn things around remains uncertain.

For now, Highguard stands as another cautionary tale in an increasingly hostile landscape for new multiplayer games. The question is whether the gaming community will reflect on what role it played in yet another studio's collapse, or if the cycle will simply repeat with the next ambitious indie shooter that dares to ask for attention.