As of today, Highguard is officially lost forever, and the game has even been delisted from storefronts like Steam. There has been no shortage of controversies surrounding this first-person shooter since its initial debut at The Game Awards 2025, with many deeming it a failure from the get-go.
Previously, a developer commented on how Highguard received increasingly positive feedback before release, which made its failure all the more shocking. Indeed, the reason Highguard showed up at The Game Awards in the first place was that it left host Geoff Keighley very impressed.
Some even believed there was no way the game could flop. Clarifying the pre-launch feedback, former Highguard developer Josh Sobel has come forward with a new statement on Twitter/X. He says that the idea of the team patting itself on the back before release is completely false.
In his latest tweet, the Highguard Technical Artist noted that the team had already received plenty of feedback on Highguard before launch, and it was often “endless and brutal.”
According to the developer, the game was torn to pieces more than once, and the team never shied away from addressing feedback. He also admitted that the post-launch feedback came as even more of a surprise for this reason.
The developers at Wildlight Entertainment will likely look back on this discrepancy with great curiosity in the years to come, but as far as the team was concerned before release, they were on the right track.
“Design/leadership sought endless brutal feedback from inside and outside the studio (NDA testers). We tore the game to pieces, constantly.” -Josh Sobel
As mentioned earlier, this clarification was made after Josh Sobel revealed how many testers and developers thought Highguard was a surefire hit. The team was incredibly positive about the title, hoping to see it thrive for years to come.
If nothing else, the first-person shooter’s failure demonstrates the difference in perspectives between general audiences and testers. Perhaps the game would have been better off with a public beta before release or an early access launch to avoid this type of situation altogether.
