{"id":473853,"date":"2026-02-17T13:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T13:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/473853\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T13:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T13:03:11","slug":"blame-the-gamers-backfires-highguard-devs-tirade-over-reviews-and-memes-draws-heavy-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/473853\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBlame the gamers\u201d backfires: Highguard dev\u2019s tirade over reviews and memes draws heavy criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"Promotional<\/p>\n

\u24d8 Wildlight Entertainment<\/p>\n

<\/a>Promotional game art for for Highguard<\/p>\n

In a now-deleted, lengthy post on X, the dev publicly called out gamers and content creators for the game’s failure.<\/p>\n

Highguard<\/a> is a free-to-play hero shooter that sees players go up against each other in 3v3 Paladin-like, MOBA combat. Popular streamer Shroud said<\/a> it gave him \u201cRealm Royale vibes.\u201d While he mentioned he wasn\u2019t completely happy with the product, he hopes that the updates and patches fix some of the issues. \u201cThey kinda need to nail it though, cuz like this game\u2019s already starting off on the back foot, like everybody already started hating it before the game came out,\u201d he added, noting that they had limited time to fix things. Shroud\u2019s opinion was much tamer than some of the other opinions on the internet; however, they all had a common theme about the game\u2019s performance and its first impressions. Two weeks after launch, and posted on LinkedIn<\/a> by a Sr. level designer who had lost his job at the studio, revealed that \u201cmost of the team at Wildlight\u201d had been laid off.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Amongst the louder voices is another popular YouTuber, Asmongold, who labelled the game \u201cConcord 2<\/a>.\u201d This apparently didn\u2019t sit well with one of the game’s developers, Josh Sobel, who, using his X account, wrote a lengthy view of his own experience.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In what appeared to be an attempt, more or less, at calling out Asmongold, without naming him, Sobel published a piece on his now-deleted account, titled \u201cReflecting on shipping my first game (Highguard). In the post, he goes on to describe the team\u2019s general attitude before the game\u2019s reveal at The Game Awards, and the reaction they got when Geoff Keighley presented their game in the final spot.\u00a0 \u201cAfter 2.5 years of passionately working on Highguard, we were ready to reveal it to the world. The future seemed bright.\u201d He went on to describe how \u201ceveryone he knew\u201c and \u201cinternal pre-reveal feedback\u201d from \u201cunbiased sources\u201d had shared similar optimistic sentiments about the game. \u201cBut then the trailer came out, and it was all downhill from there.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cYou really think that all of your friends and family are gonna tell you that your games bad? No. They\u2019re gonna look on the bright side, they\u2019re gonna try to see the good things, and they\u2019re gonna try and put a positive spin on it to make you happy.\u201d He asked, responding to Josh\u2019s post. \u201cIt\u2019s Toxic positivity,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In his post, Josh pointed out that content creators often post negative content or \u2018ragebait\u2019 to get more engagement and views. Asmongold pointed out that this was a huge fallacy: content creators create content that mirrors popular opinion. \u201cEverybody loves Baldur\u2019s Gate 3, you wanna know how to get views, talk about Baldur\u2019s Gate 3 is good,\u201d he explained, citing multiple examples. <\/p>\n

Sobel, following immediately in the footsteps of similar ventures that shifted the blame for their product’s failure onto the very people they sought to please, was quick to label any reaction or feedback that didn\u2019t align with their opinions as \u201chate\u201d. Ranging from comments criticizing their characters, like calling their opening hero Atticus, \u201cJohn Video Game,\u201d to people posting job applications to McDonalds. \u201cAt 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 stated, as he continued to lament player responses to the title.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Asmongold continued to dismantle claims the developer made throughout his video, which, admittedly, was a lot harsher than it needed to be, but that doesn\u2019t negate the truth of what the streamer (and others) had stated. It would be prudent to note that the ferocity of the feedback isn\u2019t just about the game; it\u2019s about how the developers respond to that feedback. After studios started following the \u2018blame it on the gamers\u2019 playbook, any bad reaction to similar sentiments against gamers seems likely to be met with harsh backlash.<\/p>\n

\t\"Rahim<\/a><\/p>\n

I am a UAE-based tech writer who likes to build and benchmark PCs both professionally and as a hobby. I contribute to multiple tech publications, including TechRadar and Notebookcheck, as well as Game Rant, where I focus primarily on news, commerce, and buying guides. When I’m not scouring the internet for the latest in tech stories, you will find me playing a game of Civilization or DotA with friends and frenemies alike while dropping recommendations for Apple TV+’s Foundation to everyone I come across.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u24d8 Wildlight Entertainment Promotional game art for for Highguard In a now-deleted, lengthy post on X, the dev…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[219672,219676,904,905,140007,172991,898,219673,903,897,906,219675,665,899,219674,900,219671,63794,74,902,901,219670],"class_list":{"0":"post-473853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-asmongold","9":"tag-baldursgate3","10":"tag-benchmarks","11":"tag-graphics-card","12":"tag-hero-shooter","13":"tag-highguard","14":"tag-laptop","15":"tag-moba","16":"tag-netbook","17":"tag-notebook","18":"tag-processor","19":"tag-ragebait","20":"tag-reports","21":"tag-review","22":"tag-review-bombing","23":"tag-reviews","24":"tag-shroud","25":"tag-streamers","26":"tag-technology","27":"tag-test","28":"tag-tests","29":"tag-wildlight"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}