At the same time, not all of Highguard’s numbers have tumbled like a rock off a cliff, with at least one metric showing some growth. Over the past couple of days, the game’s Steam rating has improved from Mostly Negative to Mixed, and while it’s still barely holding on at just 40% positivity score, it’s no longer in the red zone – so perhaps fewer players will be scared off and more will actually try the game before judging it.
Despite the criticism, Wildlight appears to be handling the situation in a healthy, No Man’s Sky-esque way, addressing negative feedback with post-launch patches that fix crashes and bugs, add new features and settings, and generally improve the Highguard experience. Whether this effort will be enough to change perceptions – or if the game was disliked because of its very nature, something that can’t be fixed – remains to be seen.