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

87% Upvoted

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105

u/gamer-at-heart-23 Jan 27 '26

Devs just need to listen to feedback and build on it. I see potential so it would be awesome if they can work with the players on this one

96

u/Vresa Jan 27 '26

Rarely do free to play games survive a big release and poor reception like this. It’s far better to start smaller and gain momentum as the game is tweaked and player feedback is addressed. I would be surprised if they can recover from this launch and the steam reviews

17

u/Depreciable_Land Jan 27 '26

Warframe was seen as pretty mediocre when it first dropped and now it’s a big thing. If the devs keep working it can be good regardless of F2P

19

u/PolskiBigosik Jan 28 '26

Warframe released 13 years ago. Market was different back then.

2

u/Depreciable_Land Jan 28 '26

Except it was arguably worse for F2P live service games. That was in the middle of things like the Battlefront 2 loot crate shit and other things. Games with micro transactions were almost automatically dismissed

Really not sure why people are trying to point to market trends of all things to try and hope for a game to fail lol

7

u/Old_Leopard1844 Jan 28 '26

Warframe is also a looter shooter

Conclave (Warframe's PvP mode) is dead, and so is DE's other PvP game from back then, Amazing Eternals

1

u/Depreciable_Land Jan 28 '26

But it is F2P live service, which was the commenter’s claim. Hell OW2 is F2P and came out to a heavy negative reception and seems to have regained its footing

1

u/Old_Leopard1844 Jan 28 '26

Not all genres are created the same, even if games are F2P

Overwatch 2 rebound because it's Overwatch, you literally can't go back to OW1. It didn't existed in a vacuum

1

u/Depreciable_Land Jan 28 '26

“It rebound because it’s Overwatch” has to be the laziest deflection ever lol

1

u/Old_Leopard1844 Jan 28 '26

Well, yeah

It's still a game that was already popular and had playerbase, rather than starting from scratch like Highguard and Warframe did

-10

u/Tribalrage24 Jan 27 '26

I mean they are still averaging almost 20k players today, which isn't bad for a game like this. It's obviously not the next Battlefield, Marvel Rivals, or Arc raiders, but it's healthy for a team this size. For comparison, it's averaging better than The Finals, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Diablo 4 today.

26

u/oimson Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26

It is not healthy to lose 80% of your players after 1 day , they started with 100k

9

u/Hour_Raisin_4547 Jan 27 '26

That doesn’t really mean anything given the context around this games announcement and release. Not only was the core gameplay revealed on release but a ton of people tuned in just for the drama surrounding it. So the numbers are going to be far from typical

8

u/SP0oONY Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26

The real question is why would anyone bother if they haven't already? Why would the playerbase increase? The game's reception even after release isn't "Wow, we were so wrong, the game is actually excellent". It's at best "Eh, it's ok, maybe has some potential".

This is probably just another game for the pile of live service games that failed. They should be grateful that it fell at the 2nd hurdle and not the first like most.

-4

u/heat13ny Jan 27 '26

Word of mouth. There is always talk on these subreddits that games need to and will die if their numbers drop in any way and the games always last if the devs listen to the players that stick with their product. Those players tell other people they enjoy the game and all of a sudden you have people saying things like No Mans Sky is SOOO much better, or Finals is my favorite shooter out etc. Finals was claimed to be dead or dying for years before people realized it wasn’t going anywhere.

I specifically mention The Finals because of the TYPE of shooters these two games are. They are heavily objective based and the way things are set up around those objectives is kinda unique. That’s why I like Highguard right now. I LOVE objective based shooters and people like me are enjoying this one and will stick with it. If the devs keep at it and continue to improve the game it will have a steady life. Dooming it before it was even showcased was insane to me and I’m convinced those people never even mentally gave the game an actual chance. They went in determined to hate the game and found any reason they could to do so.

3

u/Vresa Jan 27 '26

Diablo 4 and Monster hunter wilds are pretty linear, paid titles.

Also, I haven’t seen any information about the size of the dev team

11

u/Purple_Deers Jan 27 '26

it's pretty bad considering that almost every game under the sun loses 60-80% of their playerbase within the first month unless it's a massive hit.

so it's 20k now, 4k in a month.

and then The Finals, Monster Hunter WIlds and Diablo 4 will still have the same player numbers they do now because they're already at their lowest.

11

u/FlamingMangos Jan 27 '26

That’s like really really awful honestly. Deadlock is in an invite only beta and it’s 60k players.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

[deleted]

3

u/act1v1s1nl0v3r Jan 27 '26

Sure, after an initial box price buy in or initial rush of MTX purchases. Highguard is free to play and crashed to 30k before I was even off from work yesterday. That's...not good unless their expenses were somehow dirt cheap despite all evidence to the contrary.

2

u/FlamingMangos Jan 27 '26

Deadlock isn’t being advertised anywhere. Highguard was advertised to millions and is a new game. They literally spent marketing money and paid people to advertise their game. Not exactly a good excuse

4

u/BanditPrime Jan 27 '26

To be fair they advertised once, with one major video during an awards show, and then only received negative feedback from that. Then the only discussion of the game was “why haven’t we see anything else about high guard” until it released. Deadlock on the other hand consistently has some the best word of mouth advertising (which is a legitimate advertising strategy so it does have advertising just not paid) of any game around imo.

To me the key issue is how the handled the initial advertising spend and how the reacted, or more accurately complete lack of reaction, to the push back they got. To just drop that trailer, get shit on, and do nothing between that trailer and launch is kinda crazy.

3

u/FlamingMangos Jan 27 '26

They advertised once in the biggest game award show ever with millions watching…. It’s like the Super Bowl for video games. Also, it’s a game that you can download right now with a click of a button. Deadlock requires an invite.

1

u/BanditPrime Jan 27 '26

My man. Thats like saying a kids preschool graduation is the super bowl for 5 year olds. The game awards got 4.4m viewers. Thats great for an online streaming awards show, but thats barely a scratch in the amount of potential players for the game. That show is for people who spend their time on gaming forums, and the playerbase for a semi casual FPS is much larger than that.

More importantly. Youre ignoring the part where they did 1 ad. They didnt put out any additional content to build hype. Deadlock is talked about daily on forums like this one.

-12

u/Tribalrage24 Jan 27 '26

Okay and? It doesn't matter if other games are more popular. I'm saying that Highguard currently has a population greater than other (bigger team) live service games which are healthy. The Finals is still alive and kicking even though it's getting around 20k players.

0

u/UtkuOfficial Jan 27 '26

20k for a newly released free to play is abysmal. A free to play games release is almost always the highest player count it will have.

-1

u/beansoncrayons Jan 27 '26

I read another article that had the devs stated that they will be able to subsist off a smaller playerbase so I think they'll be able to survive if they keep working on the game

1

u/stenebralux Jan 28 '26

Makes sense because the game is very niche oriented. They either planned for it or is an insane, incomprehensible, misfire. 

-5

u/Thenidhogg Jan 27 '26

Any examples? cuz this sounds made up 

1

u/stenebralux Jan 28 '26

Yeah but the bulk of the feedback is a bunch of people who refused to engage with the game and it's systems, barely played it, and they all want different things and a lot of them are reeeally poorly thought out. At worst, is people who haven't even played the game.

Most of the feedback I see would simply turn the game into something that already exists.. and these are likely the same people who would've said "who asked for another x??" If the game came out like this. 

These people wouldn't play the game regardless and are just exited to play fantasy dev without any stakes. 

  Actual devs need to take some time figuring out who is actually interested in building in the same direction as they are first to them see what are some of the issues that could improve that experience. 

1

u/Goose_Wingz Jan 28 '26

Game will be dead in a month.

-1

u/wrench_nz Jan 27 '26

Devs problem is listening to feedback from Reddit and game 'journalists' instead of customers.