On X, Adrian Chmielarz responded to the words of former studio developer Josh Sobel. He claimed that before the release, it was believed that "there was no way Highguard could be a failure."
For me, there is no greater mystery in the industry than projects that hundreds of people work on for years and no one sees that they are simply weak.
Sobel pointed to the "player culture" and the wave of ridicule after the showing at The Game Awards:
All products are at the mercy of consumers, and consumers have put in an absurd amount of effort to denigrate Highguard. And it worked.
Chmielarz disagrees with this:
Now we have a developer who still can't believe he created a weak game. No, it was the “player culture” that killed it. And the Game Awards. And YouTubers feeding on negativity.
He added:
I'm genuinely surprised. [Sobel's] article begins with quotes about how the game was received internally, and yet one trailer was enough for the average player to realize it was doomed to fail. Highguard, Concord, the Painkiller reboot, and many others — hundreds of people worked on these games for years. How did they even see the light of day in this form? What is this anyway? Is it the legendary “toxic positivity”? Or something else? Tell me.
Perhaps some developers could use a little self-reflection, especially when it comes to a game that was supposed to be free from corporate influence. Criticism rarely arises out of nowhere.