It has only been a few days since the announcement of mass layoffs at Wildlight Entertainment, makers of the poorly received live-service title Highguard, and the internet is still debating about the ultimate cause of this game's failure. One former Wildlight developer, Josh Sobel, decided to toss his hat into the ring and penned a lengthy article on X in which he unintentionally showcased a work environment that many have described as radiating "toxic positivity," while also blaming disgruntled gamers and "disingenuous YouTubers" for the game's inevitable demise.
In this article, Josh wrote:
"Content creators love to point out the bias in folks who give positive previews after being flown out for an event, but ignore the fact that when their negative-leaning content gets 10x the engagement of the positive, they’ve got just as much incentive to lean into a disingenuous direction, whether consciously or not."
"We were turned into a joke from minute one, largely due to false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement, which even prominent journalists soon began to state as fact. Within minutes, it was decided: this game was dead on arrival, and creators now had free ragebait content for a month. Every one of our videos on social media got downvoted to hell. Comments sections were flooded with copy/paste meme phrases such as "Concord 2" and "Titanfall 3 died for this." At launch, we received over 14k review bombs from users with less than an hour of playtime. Many didn't even finish the required tutorial."
Despite a multitude of content creators, games journalists and current software developers urging Josh to understand that many of the issues Highguard faced were self-inflicted, it seems that Josh decided the more reasonable response would be to double-down on his denialism and to draw unfair comparisons between gamers who disliked his game, and picky, entitled customers hellbent on ruining the lives of Wildlight employees.
In a now deleted X post that was screenshotted by @MasteroftheTDS, Josh wrote:
“Hi, I grew this red apple 🍎 in my yard. Would you like it for free? If you like it, I accept tips, but no pressure.”
“I only like green apples 🍏. Also, there’s a weird bump on it. I’m gonna make sure all of my friends review bomb your Yelp page over this.”
“Damn...that’s pretty mean. Glad I have friends who appreciate my efforts to support me.”
“Toxic positivity is ruining the farming industry.”
While it is a positive sign that Josh decided to delete this post, it ultimately may not matter, as many developers and commonly called "shills" still seem unable or unwilling to understand why the vast majority of gamers chose not to give Highguard a chance. Toxic positivity and echo chambers seem to breed generic, ideologically driven products that are not made for the masses, and ultimately the audience they are made for are either not interested in supporting them financially, or are too few in numbers to keep them afloat.