Former Highguard dev who called out grave-dancing over the reveal trailer says the discourse 'had some very dark corners that may have accelerated the timeline of our failure,' but adds, 'it wasn't the primary cause'

With one day left before Highguard is gone for good, the former developer who cut loose on critics of the game's reveal trailer has walked things back a bit in a new post, saying his initial reaction "was a mistake" arising from stress, anger, and lack of sleep.

Josh Sobel, formerly the lead technical artist on Highguard, shared some pretty raw opinions on the game's demise in a now-deleted February post on X, saying "the hate started immediately" following the TGA trailer, and that "we were turned into a joke from minute one." He also implied pretty strongly that the backlash contributed significantly to Highguard's failure. All in all, it was pretty bitter—understandably so, I'd say, especially in the heat of the moment.

Now that moment has passed, and Sobel is somewhat more circumspect. "I stand by the intent behind much of what I said, but I phrased it poorly, and some of my anger was misdirected," he wrote in a new message posted to X.

"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."

I think that's a fairer take on the situation, at least as far as Highguard's final fate goes: At the end of the day, it was a pretty good game that missed the mark in some big ways, released in a genre crowded with numerous more immediately-satisfying games.

But I also agree with a lot of what he said the first time around. The Highguard reveal trailer didn't knock my socks off either, but there's a huge gap between reasonable skepticism and an eagerness to grave-dance that was readily apparent in the weeks between The Game Awards and Highguard's release. I don't think that had any real impact on the game's ultimate fortunes—Highguard drew a lot of players when it launched, but just couldn't keep them around—but it does reflect, as Sobel said, a very unfortunate dark side of gaming fandom that we've seen all too many times before, and will probably see again in the future.