Highguard Developer Speaks Out Against Toxic Online Backlash After Job Loss

Josh Sobel, a former tech artist and rigger for the live-service shooter Highguard, recently shared an insightful blog detailing his experiences during the development of the free-to-play FPS, which has faced significant challenges since its launch last month on consoles and PC. In his post, Sobel reflects on the game’s reveal and the harassment he endured.

On February 12, Sobel, who spent two and a half years at Wildlight Entertainment working on Highguard, took to Twitter to express thoughts he had been holding onto for some time. Titled “Reflecting On Shipping My First Game,” the post recounts the excitement leading up to Highguard’s reveal at the 2025 Game Awards, which Sobel described as one of the most thrilling moments of his life. “The future seemed bright,” he noted, but that optimism quickly faded after the reveal in December.

“Then the trailer came out, and it was all downhill from there,” Sobel stated.

He faced immediate backlash, with criticism directed not only at the trailer but also at him personally due to his candidness on Twitter—something his former colleagues had learned to avoid during past game launches. After making his Twitter account private to shield himself from negativity, he found himself the subject of videos and posts from content creators, which garnered millions of views and attracted a flood of angry gamers to his replies. They mocked his pride in the game, suggested he apply for jobs at fast-food chains, and ridiculed him for mentioning his autism in his bio, interpreting it as a sign that the game would be “woke trash.” The emotional toll was significant.

While Sobel acknowledged that there was valid “constructive criticism” regarding the game’s marketing, he felt it wasn’t his place to comment on that aspect. He also noted that it was impossible to determine whether the launch would have fared better or worse without the Game Awards reveal. However, he expressed that after the trailer dropped, the game was perceived as a failure from the outset, attributing this to “false assumptions” about the cost of the trailer’s spot. It was later clarified that Wildlight didn’t pay for the spot; Game Awards founder Geoff Keighley simply liked the game enough to feature it.

“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 ‘Concord 2‘ and ‘Titanfall 3 died for this.’ At launch, we received over 14k review bombs from users with less than an hour of playtime. Many didn’t even finish the required tutorial.”

Sobel didn’t place all the blame on gamers for the shooter’s struggles, but he did suggest that the gaming community wields significant influence over a game’s success or failure.

“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.” Wildlight has since announced significant layoffs.

“Many of Wildlight’s former devs will now be forced to reintegrate into the corporate industry that many gamers accused Wildlight of embodying. Now, every time someone considers leaving the corporate grind to pursue an indie multiplayer game, they’ll think, ‘But remember how gamers didn’t even give Wildlight a chance.’ If this trend continues, we may end up with only corporations in the multiplayer space. Innovation is on life support.”

Sobel concluded his post by wishing the remaining developers at the studio good luck with Highguard, expressing his belief that the game still has the potential to succeed. He emphasized that he felt the game didn’t deserve the treatment it received.

“Even if Highguard had a rocky launch, our independent, self-published, dev-led studio full of passionate people just trying to create a fun game, with zero AI and zero corporate oversight, deserved better than this,” Sobel stated. “We deserved the bare minimum of not having our downfall be gleefully manifested.”