A laid-off developer from Wildlight Entertainment's Highguard has deleted a social media post criticizing toxic reactions to the game after its reveal and launch. Josh Sobel, who worked on the multiplayer shooter, faced backlash for suggesting that online negativity contributed to its poor reception. The post, shared shortly after studio layoffs, highlighted the immediate hate following the Game Awards 2025 trailer.
Highguard, a multiplayer hero shooter developed by Wildlight Entertainment, faced significant online backlash from its reveal at The Game Awards 2025 through its January 2026 launch. Recently laid-off tech artist and rigger Josh Sobel shared his experiences in a now-deleted X (formerly Twitter) post on February 12, 2026, days after the studio announced sweeping staff cuts, reducing the team to a "core group."
Sobel described the excitement leading up to the reveal, stating, "The day leading to The Game Awards 2025 was amongst the most exciting of my life. The future seemed bright. But then the trailer came out, and it was all downhill from there. The hate started immediately. […] We were turned into a joke from minute one, largely due to false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement." He criticized negative content creators who amplified the rage, "prominent journalists" who treated presumptions as fact, and gamers who mocked the game as "woke trash" based on his autism.
Sobel acknowledged the game's shortcomings but argued that the polarized responses damaged its recovery chances, writing, "I’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. All products are at the whims of the consumers, and the consumers put absurd amounts of effort into slandering Highguard. And it worked."
The post sparked further backlash, with critics accusing developers of deflecting blame for a game that failed to retain players. Data from Ampere Analysis shows 1.54 million people played Highguard in January 2026, comparable to Palworld's launch figures, indicating initial interest but poor retention. Thousands of negative Steam reviews from minimal playtime echoed sentiments comparing it to Concord's flop.
PC Gamer's Tyler Wylde supported aspects of Sobel's view, noting, "Alas, despite telling us just before launch that Highguard didn’t need ‘super huge’ player counts to succeed, [Wildlight] was clearly betting on it being one of those exceptional games, because a normal launch wasn’t enough to keep most of its staff employed." Wylde warned against pressuring all games to be blockbusters, potentially leading to corporate dominance.
Wildlight Entertainment emphasized that Highguard was not a lab-designed live service but a risk-taking project. On February 13, 2026—a Thursday—a patch introduced technical fixes, bug corrections, faster respawn times, a shortened 90-second gearing phase, and raids ending after one generator explosion.
Sobel deleted his entire X account by February 15, 2026, amid the controversy.
