Josh Sobel, one of the lead developers behind Highguard, has come back to social media to share his regret over the statements he made earlier, and his poor handling of the criticism around the multiplayer hero shooter where he blamed gamers, content creators, and online commentators for turning Highguard and its studio “into a joke.”
In a lengthy post on X, Sobel said his post after Wildlight announced layoffs was “not wise.”
Since I reactivated my account, I’ll address the elephant in the room. My now-deleted tweet following the Highguard layoff news a month ago was a mistake. I was stressed, devastated, angry, and running on 2hrs sleep. It was not wise to take my pain to the Internet in that volatile state.
He went on to say that he stands by the intend behind what he said but acknowledged that he phrased it poorly.
I believe the online discourse around Highguard had some very dark corners that may have accelerated the timeline of our failure beyond the natural outcome of reasonable critique, but it wasn’t the primary cause, and I don’t personally believe the ultimate outcome would have been thoroughly different without it. There were a lot of elements involved, and there’s no way to know how it would have gone under different circumstances.
Before and immediately after the release of Highguard the discussion around the game had been extremely negative. Some online commentators went as far as calling it Concord 2. Many agreed that Highguard didn’t deserve the prime slot at The Game Awards, which seems to be the trigger that led to the hate around the shooter.
Highguard failed and many were laid off at the studio. Now we find out that the game is shutting down on March 12. The story of Highguard is a strong case for testing multiplayer hero shooters publicly before launching. I’d even argue that Geoff Keighley’s relentless push for a game that was clearly not ready and not suited for the prime spot at The Game Awards played a role in the negatively surrounding Highguard.
abdullah_haveit on March 11st, 2026 at 04:30 UTC »
I can appreciate that. Now maybe the mistakes of Highguard won't be repeated by at least one more dev.
tenaciouschrome on March 11st, 2026 at 04:00 UTC »
I think many people blamed and hated on the game awards and on Geoff. If the game had been shadow dropped, it would have opened up to maybe 10-20k people at most (all time peak) and way less people would have seen the game or even tried it out. It would have died way faster and no one would have even known it existed.
The Game Awards was THE reason it had almost 100k concurrent players on steam. Since it had almost 100k players at the peak, we can say that there was at least 100k players that tried the game but decided nah it wasn’t for them, the game was just overall kinda boring, and that was it.
Even after all that, this dude just threw Geoff under the bus in that article, always blaming others for their failures. The game was never gonna succeed with that mindset.
MulberryResident4402 on March 11st, 2026 at 03:39 UTC »
I’m ootl but why are we blaming Geoff when all he did was offer the spot to wild light. The article made it seem like he had a gun to the studios head. The studio could’ve easily declined it but they got overzealous cause they thought they had a great game from all the compliment. Honestly Geoff did a better job of advertising Highguard than Highguard did itself. wildlight hubris done them in not Geoff.