Highguard’s story was already headed for a painful ending. Now, just days before the game goes offline for good, one of its former developers is revisiting one of the ugliest parts of that collapse.
Wildlight Entertainment confirmed that Highguard will be permanently shut down on March 12 after failing to build a sustainable player base, despite saying more than 2 million players tried the game after launch.
At the center of the latest conversation is former Wildlight developer Josh Sobel. In a new post after reactivating his X account, Sobel said his now deleted tweet following the Highguard layoff news “was a mistake,” adding that he was stressed, angry, devastated, and running on very little sleep when he posted it. He also said it was not wise to take that pain online in such a volatile state.
Highguard’s Shutdown Has Reopened Old Wounds
When a live service game falls apart this quickly, the postmortem usually becomes just as intense as the launch itself. That has definitely been the case with Highguard.
The shooter launched in late January and initially pulled in attention, but it struggled to hold onto players. The game peaked at more than 97,000 concurrent players on Steam before dropping sharply, while Wildlight later admitted the audience was simply not large enough to keep the project alive long term.
That decline set the stage for layoffs, frustration, and a very public argument over what exactly went wrong. Some blamed the reveal, some blamed the market, and others blamed the game itself. As often happens online, the discussion stopped being just about the game and turned personal.
Josh Sobel Says the Deleted Post Was a Mistake
Sobel’s latest statement feels less like a full reversal and more like a correction. He said he still stands by the intent behind much of what he originally said, but admitted he phrased it poorly and that some of his anger was misdirected. He also wrote that the darker corners of online discourse around Highguard may have accelerated the game’s fall, but were not the primary cause, and that there is no way to know how differently things would have played out under other circumstances.
That is probably the most important part of his statement. It is not a clean apology in the usual corporate sense. It is more personal than that. Sobel is basically admitting that grief, exhaustion, and anger pushed him into posting in a way that only made an already bad situation worse. At the same time, he is not pretending the internet reaction around Highguard was healthy or fair.
He also said he restored his account shortly before the one month recovery deadline because he still values the connections he made on the platform, though he plans to keep replies limited for the sake of his mental health.
The Backlash Around Highguard Was Bigger Than One Post
Earlier reporting around Sobel’s original comments painted a much more raw picture. In February, he made a post reflecting upon Highguard’s launch, where he described the team’s confidence before the reveal trailer and the heavy wave of ridicule that followed after The Game Awards. He argued that parts of the online reaction crossed the line from criticism into harassment, with some attacks becoming personal and cruel.
That does not erase the game’s own problems. Highguard entered an overcrowded shooter market, and even Wildlight’s leadership later admitted the studio ran out of time and money and had to release with the runway it had. The game received updates, new features, and a final content push before closure, but none of it was enough to reverse the broader momentum.
So when Sobel now says the discourse may have accelerated the timeline but was not the main cause, it lands as a more measured view than what many people expected. It sounds like someone who has had time to cool off and accept that multiple failures can exist at once. The game can have missed the mark, and the internet can still have behaved terribly.
A Messy End to One of 2026’s Fastest Collapses
There is something sad about how all of this has unfolded. Highguard did not just fail. It became a punchline almost immediately, and once that happened, it never really escaped the label. Even its final update, which added a new playable character, weapon, and progression systems, arrived under the shadow of an already announced shutdown.
As Highguard prepares to disappear on March 12, Sobel’s comments feel like one last attempt to put a chaotic chapter into perspective. He is not denying that the game struggled. He is not saying criticism killed it on its own. He is simply acknowledging that he reacted badly in a brutal moment and wishes he had handled it differently.
