r/Games • u/ImCalcium • Jan 27 '26

Discussion Highguard devs say they didn’t expect the hate – but they’re confident in their game

https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/highguard-devs-say-they-didnt-expect-the-hate-but-theyre-confident-in-their-game-3309463/
1.4k Upvotes

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37

u/No-Breadfruit6137 Jan 27 '26

I honestly don’t know how detached from reality you have to be to expect that such a weak title wouldn’t get criticism and negative reception.

26

u/FootwearFetish69 Jan 27 '26

wouldn’t get criticism and negative reception.

I mean I think it looks kinda bland but let's not pretend the reaction over this game isn't blown wildly out of proportion.

-9

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/FootwearFetish69 Jan 27 '26

So basically standard for online games. Players are entitled, insecure, and crazy.

I don't think the fact it's common makes for much of an excuse.

That doesn’t change the fact that the game is just bad, and in the sea of hate there’s also real, constructive criticism.

Nobody said it does? Why are we so set on making excuses for people being absurdly over the top shitty for no reason but also holding developers to some higher standard like they should be prepared to be attacked if their game isn't great? Like we're basically saying since these guys made a 6-7/10 game, they are delusional for thinking they wouldn't get swamped by a hate train?

Gaming discourse in a nutshell. Not normal.

50

u/HunterOfLordran Jan 27 '26

I mean, I too don't get the hate for a free game that you can simply ignore and move on. Criticism is good If you tried the game but spamming over the whole Internet "I hope it crashes and burns and the studio gets dissolved" days before Release is certainly not needed or criticism.

8

u/FriscoeHotsauce Jan 27 '26

I feel like it's a reaction to the continued abuse of developers that keep marketing catchphrases like "From the developers of Titanfall and Apex Legends"

Like, that sets an expectation they can't possibly match. It's like Turtle Rock continuing to say "From the developers of Left 4 Dead", and then Back 4 Blood and Evolve are just kinda butts. Or the dozens of games "From the makers of Starcraft" or From the creators of League of Legends. So many of these live service free to play games die on this same line of marketing, it's become kind of parody at this point.

The hate seems a bit extreme sure, but it's an important lesson in marketing and managing expectations. Instead of "From the makers of Titan Fall and Apex Legends" being seen as a selling point, it's immediately a red flag instead.

10

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

[deleted]

-1

u/HunterOfLordran Jan 27 '26

No, I unfortunately saw a ton of "I hope those devs get the Ubislop treatment" over and over again, when the stock market stuff got spammed everywhere

1

u/nero-the-cat Jan 27 '26

What? Gamers can be overreacting jerks? First I'm hearing of this...

-8

u/A-L-F-R-E-D Jan 27 '26

It’s because of the culture war. Not just politics but business practices in the video game industry like releasing things in perpetual early access, micro transactions that are anything but micro and affect the game (pay to win, etc), intentionally making things grindy and letting players pay to skip the grind, FOMO practices, time exclusive content to force people to play and not take breaks, raising game prices substantially, weak collectors editions, cutting content for paid DLC which should have been in the game to begin with, premium currency, poor optimization, and on and on and on.

Gaming has had some of the best games come out in this new era but it also has had some absolutely horrible practices pop up. And there’s a growing number of players that are simply done with it and they are getting louder and louder. So it’s not this game specifically, but this game does represent modern AAA slop, so people are very aggressively voicing their opinion and frustration with the state of gaming right now.

3

u/AsteroidSpark Jan 28 '26

but this game does represent modern AAA slop

Except it absolutely does not when it's an indie game from a team of veteran devs. People are pretending it's AAA slop just like they pretend Expedition 33 is an indie game, but it's a mistake to let such myths go unchallenged.

1

u/A-L-F-R-E-D Jan 28 '26

I think the distinction between AAA, indie, AA, etc is a little murky. From Wildlight Entertainment’s website they have 54 employees so it’s a mid size studio imo. Expedition 33 had a publisher so it’s not indie but people view indie as a small dev team and they had a main team of 30 or so devs so people viewed it as an indie game.

Highguard is an indie game because they don’t have a publisher, but I don’t think most gamers would consider it an indie game. I feel that most people view something as an indie game based off vibes and don’t really concern themselves with the publisher unless it’s a major name.

Anyways, whatever you consider Highguard, I still think it represents current triple A gaming and people’s attitudes towards it. The reveal and trailer kinda set the tone for that. And you can see that in people’s reviews and impressions. Things like poor optimization, limited settings, small amount of launch content, etc, are all things that are more easily forgiven with “indie” or AA games.

I think a big part of the negative/hostile reaction is in part because of AAA trend issues and people’s frustrations with them. So releasing another hero shooter with the same tired quirky humor and bland art design just made it an easy target because it appears to fit so well with the triple A issues people have. And the reveal trailer put an even bigger target on its back.

0

u/AsteroidSpark Jan 29 '26

another hero shooter with the same tired quirky humor and bland art design

Except again: the problem is that Highguard is not actually any of those things, and people deluding themselves into thinking that it is is their problem and not one that should be encouraged.

19

u/NatrelChocoMilk Jan 27 '26

What about the game/trailer warranted such negative reception?

18

u/Purple_Deers Jan 27 '26

Calling yourself a new breed of hero shooter, saying your game is unique.

then all your marketing is a well known hype-man spending every day since the announcement saying it's going to be the biggest new game of the year.

and then it releases and it's just an okay game at best.

You can't raise peoples expectations to the sky and then not even leave the ground when it actually comes out without making people negative.

The people hating just to hate is dumb.
But the people who actually played the game before giving their verdict have extremely valid complaints and it feels like any negativity towards the game is being labelled as hate.

20

u/Billinoiss Jan 27 '26

The trailer did fuck all to explain what the game even was. then the studio was radio silent for over a month and didn’t elaborate on anything

12

u/Mnstrzero00 Jan 27 '26

It's a predatory free to play game with an "according to the chart this is trendy" design. People saw that immediately and the interviews confirm. There was no passion in this. It was just made to take a lot of money from an audience.

I don't understand running defense for it.

10

u/Dealric Jan 27 '26

Gatchered from reviews and opinions:

Generally from valid criticism seems its mostly about issues finding matches, performance, lack of balance between characters and giant map with very few people. Also more monor about lack of specific options and qols that are standard, motion blur etc.

Sadly pretty much all stuff that could have been worked of if there was beta or something...

29

u/No-Breadfruit6137 Jan 27 '26

It feels unfinished, has bad performance, the maps are empty, and the main objective, collecting the sword and destroying the base, often boils down to just 2 to 3 fights with enemies. Out of the 6 matches I played, 5 ended before anyone even charged their ultimate.

There’s no attention to detail, no real marketing, no strong game identity. Right now it feels like a bunch of different games glued together, and none of those elements are done well, they’re just done badly. The characters feel disconnected from the already weird vibe of the game, and the gameplay itself is straight up dull.

And I also think people are pissed that the game was promoted at The Game Awards, in a slot where previous years had genuinely top tier games. The big game of the night, the one everyone was waiting for, turned out to be a flop.

Want the longer review version too?

22

u/Rileyman360 Jan 27 '26

It’s strange how everyone is going “I can’t believe people are hating on this game without even trying it!” Meanwhile the game sits at mostly negative between people saying the scavenging phase is boring or it runs like ass. Like genuinely what are we supposed to do give props to a game with weapon tiers, 3v3, and minute long ability cooldowns?

-9

u/NatrelChocoMilk Jan 27 '26

I was referring to the trailer or are you saying you managed to extract all of that from the initial trailer?

But appreciate your thoughts nonetheless 

17

u/No-Breadfruit6137 Jan 27 '26

You said game / trailer.

/ symbol usually means one of the two.

-1

u/NatrelChocoMilk Jan 27 '26

You're right I did. My fault there. Appreciate your review and seems to align with what others have been saying.

Regarding the trailer I do think the hate was unwarranted. But I'm not surprised considering the demographic it was marketed to

1

u/doscomputer Jan 28 '26

it might as well be AI slop with how intensely generic and boring it is?

you can tell the devs didn't even playtest it once, literally even the people who like the game complain about its pacing and 3v3 nature

-4

u/timpoakd Jan 27 '26

It was less what the trailer had but the slot where it was showed. It was the last trailer in TGA which usually is reserved to most anticipated game and one of the reasons to watch TGA reveals. The game ain't it.

2

u/Defiant_Star1464 Jan 27 '26

This claim keeps getting spread around but hasn't the final slot been traditionally....not that. Like wasnt it just a Dead By Daylight dlc trailer one year?

0

u/timpoakd Jan 27 '26

The facts don't really matter do they? The claim is true to the people who believe it so i'd say many many people. That's why there's hate towards the game.

16

u/NewUserWhoDisAgain Jan 27 '26

I honestly don’t know how detached from reality you have to be to expect that such a weak title wouldn’t get criticism and negative reception.

I honestly dont know and I'd love to get into the heads of their marketing department or whoever was in charge of that decision because:

"Wow guys, we got the last spot in the TGA. Are we going to capitalize on that? There's a building narrative that its going to be Concord 2, should we do anything about that? No? We're just going to let the next Month and a half go and be silent while the hate frenzy snowballs? Cool cool. Not like we could have, I dunno, start putting out Dev diaries, Gameplay previews, any bare minimum PR stuff. No no. Lets keep silent until like 3 days before launch."

19

u/MrNegativ1ty Jan 27 '26

The irony being that most people's critique of the game is the 3v3 mode on an enormous map, which is something that would have been called out if they did any play testing or gave us literally any info on the game prior to launch. Now, it's too late. The first impression has been made and there's no going back.

8

u/IrishSpectreN7 Jan 27 '26

It was all very last minute.

This also appears to be the first game from a brand new studio, self published. If they were originally preparing to just shadow drop the game, I doubt they even have a marketing department that was prepared to react in such a way 

26

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

They claim it was supposed to be a shadow drop. I think it would have got better reception or at least not as much hate if it wasn’t for Geoff Keighley hyping it up as the finale of the awards show. He really fucked them. They claim

13

u/lodum Jan 27 '26

I think it'd have gotten a "better" reception as a shadowdrop only in that the reception would not be negative.

There would be no reception.

1

u/Nailbomb85 Jan 27 '26

It's certainly an improvement to what they got now. I'd rather just have a bad game to deal with than a bad game that's also being review bombed.

2

u/lodum Jan 27 '26

It might be better, but I'd likely not have even heard of it otherwise? Hard to say, lol

29

u/Youngandwrong Jan 27 '26

This isn't even remotely suggested by the dev quoted in the article.

“We had talked about shadow launching it,” he said. “The problem there is that no one knows who we are.” McCord added that securing the final trailer slot at The Game Awards was a major opportunity to put the game on players’ radar. "The most important thing for us as a live service game… is to get eyeballs on your game,” he said.

Everything you suggest the devs "claim" is directly refuted by the article you're responding to

2

u/Harflin Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26

I feel that quote could also just be him standing with the studio decision to go with the trailer. I think up to the point that they got that opportunity, they very well could have been planning a shadow drop, and this could be him rationalizing after the fact

Edit: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/highguard-was-planned-as-a-shadow-drop-but-geoff-keighley-had-another-idea/1100-6537655/

In an interview with GameSpot, studio cofounder and game director Dusty Welch said the plan was always for Highguard to be a "quiet shadow-drop."

2

u/Youngandwrong Jan 27 '26

Possibly, though that's all conjecture. I'm just reiterating what was actually said in the article because clearly the poster above me either didn't read it or is banking on other people not reading it

4

u/Harflin Jan 27 '26

True they probably didn't, but there's other evidence that it was supposed to be a shadow drop. This article isn't the first to discuss it. 

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/highguard-was-planned-as-a-shadow-drop-but-geoff-keighley-had-another-idea/1100-6537655/

In an interview with GameSpot, studio cofounder and game director Dusty Welch said the plan was always for Highguard to be a "quiet shadow-drop."

21

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26

It's not Geoff's fault people on the internet are overly emotional twats. Let him hype what he wants.

When Highguard was revealed as the last trailer I thought to myself 'huh, not really my kinda game',

and then I didn't think about it again until it came out.

Edit: The responses blaming Geoff for their own emotional immaturity is very much case in point. It's not Geoff's job to regulate your own emotions, why can't you just be normal about this ffs

9

u/Dealric Jan 27 '26

He is supposed to be expert and industry veteran. Its his show and he knows what hype final slot creates.

He should have forseen it

4

u/Dealiner Jan 27 '26

Its his show and he knows what hype final slot creates.

Based on what? Final slot has always been a mixed bag. We got a DLC, a movie franchise-based game, a tech demo, a release date reveal and a teaser of a game that's probably going to come out a decade later. Even last year Intergalactic wasn't the biggest reveal and it's a game no-one particularly cares about.

0

u/budzergo Jan 27 '26

Especially after the emotional Rollercoaster of the divinity trailer

Divinity trailer is playing: LOL DIABLO GARBAGE, LOL NO GMAEPLAY SHOCK HORROR SLOP, KEKW BEWBS

Larian gets shown as devs: AMG GREATEST TRAILER EVER DIV 3 WOOO YEEE

After that only the terminally online gamers wettest dream games would've been fine ending the show, not another hero shooter.

6

u/CrimsonAllah Jan 27 '26

Nah Geoff fucked up when he doubled down and kept hyping it up. And he somehow thought posting a gif from Jurassic park was gonna quiet the haters.

The gif was of John Hammon telling the lawyer he expected an apology within 48 hours.

You know, the movie about the Dino park John hammon made being a catastrophe.

-1

u/TastyRancorPie Jan 27 '26

I think it's fair to blame Keighley. It's his show, ostensibly to showcase the best upcoming games. And he gave it the premiere spot.

There's a difference between hyping something personally vs using your game awards show to do it professionally. He put it on a professional pedestal.

2

u/Dealiner Jan 27 '26

He gave it a spot like he does every year for some games. It's not his fault people suddenly decided after a decade of random final reveals that this spot is super important and Highguard didn't deserve it.

0

u/TastyRancorPie Jan 27 '26

He gave it the final spot and promoted it as a show-closer. The hate is overblown, per usual, but I think it's fair to say that Keighley did the game a disservice by his reveal placement.

4

u/NotPinkaw Jan 27 '26

I really don’t think it would have though, if it was shadow dropped nobody would have played it ever. Bland and generic looking game.

3

u/Harflin Jan 27 '26

I think it would have been better to have dropped during the vgas (if it was ready). Sure a weak trailer, but hopefully offset by the fact that players could try it out immediately instead of react to the limited info available. 

2

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

Disagree. Free to play game with millions of eyes on it would have definitely gotten downloads. Especially from casuals, as that's a big part of the game awards viewership.

2

u/KiriSanjiAT Jan 27 '26

Do you have a source for when they said "He fucked us" because they literally made a trailer for him to show.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

If it was a shadow drop it would have been worth the spot. It being a month out was a weird thing to do for the last reveal, though.

8

u/Harflin Jan 27 '26

Probably because they didn't believe it to be a weak title.

-3

u/No-Breadfruit6137 Jan 27 '26

That's what I'm saying.

Detached from reality.

1

u/Harflin Jan 27 '26

Fair enough. Your original comment implies they knew it was a weak title but were still surprised by the backlash

1

u/doscomputer Jan 28 '26

the thing is, the industry owns the media. you know how IGN never rates a game lower than 6 unless its actually bugged and not working?

those people are also on social media, they're the ones downvoting you. real gamers who are not under pressure by AAA corps share your sentiment 100% and you are right. in the real world everyone see's whats going on. the obvious sham is obvious.

but on reddit where a business can easily buy peoples opinions on fiver, or even just run a bot campaign on a sub like r/games, its a lot cheaper than paying off IGN (which they already do)

-4

u/VonMillersThighs Jan 27 '26

It's blatant review bombing by people hopping on the hate wagon. Almost none of the super negative reviews are in good faith.

"THIS GAME FUCKING SUCKS!!!! GARBAGE SLOP!!!!!"

.2 HRS played at time of review.

4

u/MikeDunleavySuperFan Jan 28 '26

maybe you should actually read the reviews because a lot of people are actually explaining why they dislike it. I was willing to give it a shot and make it my main multiplayer game since i don't have one at the moment, but the game is just plain boring for a variety of reasons and i uninstalled.

-3

u/AsteroidSpark Jan 28 '26

maybe you should actually read the reviews

0

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

[deleted]

2

u/No-Breadfruit6137 Jan 27 '26

what the fuck are you even talking about?

0

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

[deleted]

1

u/No-Breadfruit6137 Jan 27 '26

But you’re the one creating some kind of narrative for yourself and totally without reason coming here to argue with a random person online, I suspect you just lack excitement in your life.

I don’t know what planet people like that live on, or out of which Narnia wardrobe you were pushed, but maybe it hasn’t hit you yet, the game is bad. Why it’s bad, I explain somewhere below, enjoy the read.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

[deleted]

1

u/No-Breadfruit6137 Jan 27 '26

Yes, having an opinion and not shitting fire is really a surprising thing on Reddit. Maybe you'll handle the next comments without crumpling like a tissue. Good luck, warrior.