Almost one month after launch and the game seems pretty dead.
Highguard was announced at The Game Awards with a trailer that, to put it mildly, received a rather lukewarm reaction from the community. Roughly a month later, things are not looking good for the game, and one of its developers does not see the reasons for its failure solely on the development team’s side.
Highguard Dev Claims Review Bombing And Ragebait Hurt The Game
At The Game Awards, the game was advertised as a revolution in the shooter genre. Not even a month after release, however, a large portion of the development team was reportedly laid off, and the game’s website has gone offline as well, making its future look increasingly uncertain.
One of the developers affected by the layoffs was former Lead Tech Artist Josh Sobel. In a statement posted on X, he reflected on the past few weeks. According to him, content creators played a massive role in the game’s downfall:
"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."
Furthermore, Sobel mentioned that he received a substantial number of hate messages on his X account. As a result, he turned his profile private, which led some content creators to publicly call him out for doing so. From his perspective, the game was declared a failure before it was ever given a fair chance:
"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."
He further emphasized the influence consumers have in today’s gaming industry:
"In discussions online about Highguard, Concord, 2XKO, and such, it is often pointed out by gamers that devs like to blame gamers for their failures, and that that’s silly. As if gamers have no power. But they do. A lot of it. 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."
Ultimately, he argued that situations like the one surrounding Highguard could discourage smaller studios from experimenting with new and innovative concepts in the multiplayer space in the future. As a result, that area of the industry could increasingly be left to major corporations.
Beyond Highguard
The game was far from perfect, and ultimately that is the main reason it has already lost around 95% of its player base. That much is clear. Still, Sobel’s statements should not be dismissed outright. Blaming all content creators would be overly simplistic, especially since several major streamers actually gave the game a fair shot. However, hearing that the game was review bombed by users who did not even complete the tutorial helps explain why he is frustrated.
The broader point is worth considering. Most gamers would agree that they are tired of full-price titles packed with microtransactions and paywalls, propped up mainly by established brand names. If smaller studios are discouraged from experimenting because backlash forms before a game even launches, the industry risks becoming even more dominated by the same major corporations and familiar franchises.
So perhaps the next time a multiplayer title from a smaller studio is revealed, it might be worth giving it an honest chance before deciding based solely on a trailer that it deserves to fail.
