Highguard - Concord 2.0?

[Swine Schwein]

You had nearly 100K players. You genuinely had 100K pairs of hands playing the game.

Sure, but 96% of them happened to see a thumbnail of an Asmongold video so they got radicalized and turned against the game they loved.

 

[Disc]

These people really make it their life, huh? They do realize outside of a core crew, basically everyone is contracted now in games, don't they? You hav to expect to move on.
View attachment 8554490View attachment 8554516

Posted by the 'character outsource manager.' So what did she do exactly? Get paid to make bad decisions while Koreans and jeets and Chinks did the heavy lifting?
View attachment 8554513

I think they were in indefinite-term positions, rather than contracted ones. THe fact all the layoffs happened at once suggests that their employment could be terminated at any time, and that doesn't tend to line up with fixed-term contracts - not to mention they were a large enough clump to make up "most" of the studio. This was definitely management panicking.

This doesn't actually help their case, mind. Let's say that the firings wouldn't have happened if the game sold really, really well, guess what? The fact that the game had so little wiggle room that they had a round of layoffs after two weeks is yet ANOTHER sign of utter mismanagement. At the very least, if they'd had more money I imagine they would have weaned people off more delicately, send them off with a smile style.

Not surprised that the game had outsourced assets - it'd go a long way to explain how generic shit was.

 

[Oliver Onions]

That PC Gamer article is full of premium cope. I love it.

Internal feedback on Highguard prior to its reveal "was quite positive," Sobel wrote: There was, apparently, a widespread expectation that the game was a sure-fire hit.

Fucking hell, it really was just like Concord.

From my own time with the game I cannot believe anyone thought this trash was even fun, never mind a 'sure fire hit'. You only need to play a single match to realise how unbearably boring it is spending 90% of your time running around a largely empty map.

We were turned into a joke from minute one, largely due to false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement

No, it was because the trailer called the game a new breed of shooter, but it looked like the same generic slop that's already failed a dozen times before. Even after it came out that Geoff allegedly played the trailer for free the roasting never let up.

But you know, maybe if you hadn't gone completely radio silent between the TGA reveal and the game's release you could have cleared up this supposed misunderstanding.

So Highguard is Concord 2.0, Marathon will be Concord 3.0??

No game will ever flop as hard as Concord again. It's a fun moniker to give failed live services, but the scale of failure Concord achieved was literally historic. It will be taught in college courses.

Highguard will flop and probably take the studio with it, Marathon will hold on a good bit longer but eventually kill Bungie, and Fairgames is never coming out.

 

[The Last Stand]

Posted by the 'character outsource manager.' So what did she do exactly? Get paid to make bad decisions while Koreans and jeets and Chinks did the heavy lifting?

Looks like something I’d see in Overwatch or Apex Legends.

 

[Zenos Yae Viator]

Marathon was the original Concord 2 before surprise announcement of Highguard. I'd say that technically, Highguard is actually Concord 3.
Marathon is fucking gaudy. I would've loved narrative-driven FPS, or faithful reimagining akin to Doom 2016 instead of this extraction shooter slop - that's the sort of idiotic direction you can only expect to come from above, from people who knows fucking nothing about gaming and just thinks that trend-chasing = profit. I can just feel that no one working on it actually wanted to make it. Just like how no one wants to play it.

Marathon is awful and as someone who cares about color theory and art styles, its a fucking war crime, I get what they are trying to do, technicolor horror, but they didn't pull it off.

however, Marathon will not fail initially, the Bungie dicksucks will play it, simple as, it will not be a big success but it will limp forward.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

Nah, it's a Bungie game. It'll do "okay" at the very least, just on the Bungie name and the Marathon name. It certainly isn't Marathon, but I doubt they're aiming at the original audience anyway. And I think Bungie would have to fumble VERY hard to have a flop on their hands of the caliber of Concord or Highguard.


You can instantly spot these idiots (who've only been in the industry for a decade or less) by this expectation of staying employed after shipping a game. It's been an open secret from the mid 2000's that in most game studios, teams are hired/employed (even as "full time salaried" employees) for a single years-long project and then unceremoniously dropped about a week or two after launch, even if the game does gangbusters. Only the newbies are surprised by this.

I contracted for awhile at the EA studio responsible for Mirror's Edge. There were still photos up on the walls from the recent launch party for the game. Then I noticed ... there didn't seem to be anybody still around in the studio who'd worked on the game or even knew much about it. Never saw (in person) anyone in any of the photos either. The fucking sysadmins there knew more about the game engine than the guys working on the [unnamed product] I was grinding on.

You're a cog in that industry, more so than in the other shades of the IT realm. You grind, you take your pay, and you fuck off. You give zero fucks about what you worked on and you leave it behind when you walk out of the building on your last day (which you can predict accurately by locating "launch day" on the calendar and calculating '+14 days'). Plan accordingly, and whatever extra duration you get from the gig is just extra cash in your pocket.

Mirror's Edge was a masterpiece. And it's no wonder DICE never made anything as good as that since.
You can't just plug random people in and expect the same outcome, it's not an espresso machine. I've been passionate about games since childhood, so I always kept an eye on the industry because I was curious about how the magic happens. Stories like these are always disheartening.

I did notice that people in gamedev seem to feel especially entitled to employment, and for some reason gamers are expected to feel sorry for them. Even if they clearly fucking deserve getting fired.

Marathon is awful and as someone who cares about color theory and art styles, its a fucking war crime

As someone who has eyes, I concluded the same.

 

[volatile puar]

Best case scenario for Marathon is that, like Star Wars Outlaws, it will technically do well but still fail because the budget was too high. Since it will be a live-service game, they might be able to make back the budget eventually, but it will fail to meet expectations. The worst case scenario is Redfall 2 where it fails to maintain the necessary player count and it dies in a year. I'd say the first is more likely since Marathon's gameplay will probably be decent.

 

[Lucas Silva #4903141]

Fairg$mes will be Concord 5.0

Damn, this thread reminded me of Fairgame$ being a real game.
The last post from the social media account is here: may 30, 2023

Give 'em the smoke.

https://x.com/play_fairgames/status/1663576007243169792

News I could find after that:
February 16, 2025

https://archive.ph/3XBfN

Remember Sony’s Fairgame$? It Still Exists, And Is Reportedly Delayed​

Now, we have word about the game, not from Sony, or developer Haven Studios led by Jade Raymond, but from journalist and insider Jeff Grubb, who says the game has “slipped” to 2026 as Sony continues to build out its live service future.

September 1, 2025

https://www.ign.com/articles/sonys-live-service-ambitions-take-another-blow-as-fairgames-creative-director-leaves-haven-studios-mid-development

(Archive link is in dutch for some reason?)

Sony's Live-Service Ambitions Take Another Blow As Fairgames' Creative Director Leaves Haven Studios Mid-Development​

The fate of PlayStation's upcoming live-service game Fairgames is once again under scrutiny as its creative director, Daniel Drapeau, has confirmed he has left Haven Studios to join Warner Bros. Games Montreal. It's the second high-profile exit of the summer, with studio founder Jade Raymond also exiting back in May, several weeks after an external playtest reportedly met a lukewarm response.

Fairgames — stylized as Fairgame$ — is described as "a competitive modern heist game where you team up to break into exotic locations and steal the cargo." The twist is that you not only need to outsmart guards and security systems, but you also need to compete against other teams, too. There's no word yet on when it'll launch.

Surely we'll hear about a release date this year, right?

 

[Gorkzillah]

For once YouTube actually did it's job and recommended me this video lol
Our nigga bro telling it his it is ngl

 

[p1138]

I did notice that people in gamedev seem to feel especially entitled to employment, and for some reason gamers are expected to feel sorry for them. Even if they clearly fucking deserve getting fired.

And since we were an independent, self-published studio built with royalties in mind, many of us were hoping this could finally be the thing that broke the millennial financial curse.

In this case it's even dumber than usual, this retard thought he had won the lottery by working at the studio. It also conveniently ignores the fact that they were a corporation, had VC backers and a board, and so on.

But then the trailer came out, and it was all downhill from there. 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.

Yes retard, people flown out for a fucking free mini vacation will say your shit is amazing. It happened with Star Wars Outlaws and that game was clearly trash yet the people who got a free disney vacation said it was the best thing ever while they were there. Everyone else covering it? Maybe if there was actual marketing showing wtf the game was? Maybe if once they had 100,000 eyeballs on PC alone looking at the game it actually worked? Maybe with those 100k players if they actually saw a good game they'd have liked it? Plenty of other indie studios never get a chance for 100k players actually attempting to try their game at launch.

The hate started immediately. In addition to dogpiling on the trailer, I personally came under fire due to my naïveté on Twitter, which almost all of my now-former coworkers had learned to avoid during their previous game launches. After setting my Twitter account to private to protect my sanity, many content creators made videos and posts about me and my cowardice, amassing millions of views and inadvertently sending hundreds of angry gamers into my replies. They laughed at me for being proud of the game, told me to get out the McDonald’s applications, and mocked me for listing having autism in my bio, which they seemed to think was evidence the game would be “woke trash.” All of this was very emotionally taxing.

So either your co-workers didn't warn you against white-knighting the game on twitter so they set you up to fail. Or they did warn you and you were a fucking idiot because you were so high on your own farts

There is much constructive criticism that can be and has been said about Highguard’s trailer, marketing, and launch, but I don’t think it’s my place to commentate on that.

Well maybe if you were so invested as a royalties focused developer run indepemdent studio employee, you could have given feedback to the marketing team to maybe show the game? Do a beta and take feedback? Actually do some fucking marketing?

Many didn't even finish the required tutorial.

Because the game fucking crashed, or otherwise wouldn't work.

Everyone I knew who had any connection to the team or project had the same sentiments:
“This is lightning in a bottle.”
“I trust this team wholeheartedly.”
“If there’s one project nobody in the industry is worried will fail, it’s yours.”
“This has mainstream hit written all over it.”
“There’s no way this will flop.”
"I could play this game all day."
The internal pre-reveal feedback, even from unbiased sources, was quite positive, and where it was negative, it was constructive, and often actionable. People who played the game, including us, had a blast.

This is the equivalent of: "But my grandma said I was handsome". Replace all of his commentary about "gamers" with "women" and he sounds like a fucking incel.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

Yes retard, people flown out for a fucking free mini vacation will say your shit is amazing. It happened with Star Wars Outlaws and that game was clearly trash yet the people who got a free disney vacation said it was the best thing ever while they were there. Everyone else covering it? Maybe if there was actual marketing showing wtf the game was? Maybe if once they had 100,000 eyeballs on PC alone looking at the game it actually worked? Maybe with those 100k players if they actually saw a good game they'd have liked it? Plenty of other indie studios never get a chance for 100k players actually attempting to try their game at launch.

All of this is textbook cope. The actual truth could be summed up with this image:

 

[Lucas Silva #4903141]

Posted by the 'character outsource manager.' So what did she do exactly? Get paid to make bad decisions while Koreans and jeets and Chinks did the heavy lifting?

Here we go:

https://x.com/TerezaRozumkova/status/2022279091198799910

My previous post sparked questions about what “3D Character Outsource Management” means in game development - it’s not talked about much publicly, but it’s a massive part of most games nowadays (used everywhere from Riot, Epic, Blizz to Expedition 33), and I think it's good we get to talk about it, so here’s an explanation coming from my personal experience.

Imagine a studio needs to ship ~70 character/mount skins in less than a year.

One 3D skin can take ~50 production days to complete (depends on the game and art/tech fidelity). A small internal team physically cannot build that many assets alone in that time, so multiple external art studios work alongside the internal team. (imo, this is not ideal, and I wish game studios invested more into growing their internal teams, but this is sadly not the reality in the industry right now)
Someone still needs to ensure all of that work becomes one cohesive game.
That means making sure every asset:
- matches the game’s 3D art style
- works with rigs and technical constraints
- meets quality standards at each milestone
- integrates correctly in-engine
- stays on schedule
That means reviewing every stage of the asset, giving daily hands-on feedback on 3D models, matching art direction, doing paintovers/sculptovers, fixing broken files, fixing issues in Maya/UE5/Marmoset or the billion other softwares you need to master to create 3D assets (I could go on about this lol), troubleshooting production issues, giving feedback on concepts, coordinating with tech art/animation/design, and stepping in when vendors get stuck or timelines slip. All that and more (for up to 32 characters at once, in this case).

Now, most games already have an established outsourcing pipeline, but imagine doing this while the outsourcing pipeline itself doesn’t exist yet - building documentation, workflows, onboarding, putting together quality benchmarks so vendors know what the final asset should look like, building vendor communication structure, review structure, feedback loops and integration processes while production is already underway.

All that is the kind of Character Outsource Management work I did last year.

At Highguard, I helped build that pipeline from zero and ship 30 skins for Season 1, 18 skins for Season 2, and a lot more for seasons that might not see the light of day.

I'm honored I got to work with the amazing vendor artists who put so much hard work and time into creating all of those skins - we were lucky to work with some incredible people, and their art and passion is the main thing that should be celebrated. I was just lucky I got to help get everything shipped.I haven't gone through all my feedback on Highguard yet, but I'm attaching some examples of the feedback I did on League to enlighten just a small, more visible part of what I get to do daily.

Now, look.
I'm not gonna take shots at her. She had a job, and I'm assuming she did what she was told. Why in the fuck were these devs prioritizing so many skins? The core game was not finished. This mentality of nickel and diming players needs to die already.

ACK man made a video about this game, btw. He had some fun with it, but knew this game's fate, and became well aware of the issues with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAVCKDG69Gk

 

[p1138]

Now, look.
I'm not gonna take shots at her. She had a job, and I'm assuming she did what she was told. Why in the fuck were these devs prioritizing so many skins? The core game was not finished. This mentality of nickel and diming players needs to die already.

Because that's how they intend to make money. The ideal corporate game, even if the retard dev who posted the twitter article doesn't thing their studio was a corporate entity is:

F2p game to attract the largest audience possible, including children
Monetize as much of the game as gamers will put up with, the easy answer for this is cosmetics
Get children to beg their parents for money for skins so they aren't a default normie at school getting bullied(yes this happened with fortnite)
Churn out more cosmetics for eternity because they're lower effort than producing meaningful content like unique characters, levels, pve/story mode shit, etc.

That's how MOBAs do it. That's how fortnite does it when they aren't tweaking the map once or twice a year. None of these people come to these projects from the perspective of "If we make a great game, people will like it and buy it" it's "how can we make our monetization as inoffensive as possible while still raking in money and occupying as much time as possible so players don't get a chance to try another game and get hooked on something else".

 

[volatile puar]

Imagine a studio needs to ship ~70 character/mount skins in less than a year.

No, I won't imagine, give me the actual number.

One 3D skin can take ~50 production days to complete

I'm not some kind of RIGGER or modeler, but I really doubt this has anything to do with the amount of work required, but rather is due to unskilled artists or very poor work management.

That means making sure every asset:
- matches the game’s 3D art style
- works with rigs and technical constraints
- meets quality standards at each milestone
- integrates correctly in-engine
- stays on schedule

NOT MENTIONED: model must match the design made by the core design team. Implies they let the outsourced labor come up with the designs.

All that and more (for up to 32 characters at once, in this case).

Now we now how many heroes they held back from launch. I thought she was trying to be hide the actual numbers. Anyway, obviously that 70 skins estimate is the actual number, which implies 1 alternate skin per character and a few alternate mount skins or extras.

At Highguard, I helped build that pipeline from zero and ship 30 skins for Season 1, 18 skins for Season 2, and a lot more for seasons that might not see the light of day.

As if they're gonna just sit on unrealized assets and choose to lose money instead.

The core game was not finished

Intentionally. Because they thought they would make more money by holding back 80% of the content they had already made for several seasons. You only get one first impression.

 

[Gorkzillah]

btw did you boys check the State of Play from SONY? there were some not so bad stuff but still it's the tranny lovers from sony so .. fuck them but still...
I guess next CONCORD is Marathon... we will see on the public test the numbers and stuff and the price when it released ... the trailer they showed was slightly better but still pretentious as fuck
I've watched/listened to 3 videos/reactions (Synthler, blady and Qwazar) 5-7 scores
Silent Hill N was really funny ngl

 

[Toxic BRAAAAP Mask]

I think they were in indefinite-term positions, rather than contracted ones. THe fact all the layoffs happened at once suggests that their employment could be terminated at any time, and that doesn't tend to line up with fixed-term contracts - not to mention they were a large enough clump to make up "most" of the studio. This was definitely management panicking.

I should clarify when I say contract work, I mean 'in essence' not actual legalities because it boils down to being the same whether it's a six month or 2.5 year term like in this doofus's case. They should always be ready to move on, especially if they're not blind like this guy and couldn't see the writing on the wall of a shit game. It's also why I hate game journalism, they'll headline a layoff but then you read and it's a writer and they left after a year, meaning their job was done. AAA is no different than making movies now.

Now, look.
I'm not gonna take shots at her. She had a job, and I'm assuming she did what she was told. Why in the fuck were these devs prioritizing so many skins? The core game was not finished. This mentality of nickel and diming players needs to die already.

Yup this was what I assumed. Glorified middle management.

NOT MENTIONED: model must match the design made by the core design team.

It should be noted they had several outsource managers and apparently some not titled as such, so basically 3/4 of this game was outsourced if not more.

This looks more and more like an intentional cashgrab and employee rugpull. Mysterious funding, free TGA spot, outsourcing to the extreme, supposedly having over a year or so worth of content built up... I wouldn't be surprisd if half of what was laid off was going to be laid off regardless of how well the game did, they just weren't expecting it to bomb this hard.

 

[Forgotten Beast]

So are we placing bets on when the "we're sorry game ded" png goes up on X?

At first, I thought they would try to power through a couple of months. After this week's events, there's no point. If the game wasn't the butt of every joke before, it is now. I don't find the game as bad as most people, and other games could afford to barely keep the ship from completely sinking with around 1k players daily peaks. But I know one thing as a fact: nobody was buying those uninspired skins up to this point, and sure as hell nobody is buying them now that everybody can see this game is on its way to getting Old Yeller'ed, even those weirdos who seem to legitimately enjoy the game. The only point of trying to keep the game online for a while would be to protect the studio's reputation, which is pointless now that the whole Internet has witnessed them metaphorically wetting their pants in front of everyone.
I bet that the official death certificate will be posted before March.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/laid-off-highguard-developer-cuts-loose-on-the-reaction-to-the-infamous-game-awards-reveal-trailer-we-were-turned-into-a-joke-from-minute-one/ https://archive.ph/8S9Y7

Holy shit, this dude's rant is a goldmine. You would have a hard time finding somebody more out of touch with every external aspect of his industry than this dude. "Timmy from accounting said this game was unsinkable!" Good grief.
If this game wasn't a Concord-like before, this guy alone has made it into one. It's the same tale, beat for beat.
It's one thing to be so out of touch that you release a game nobody wants because you were high on your own farts. Could happen to anyone, really. But this man witnessed his game launch like a wet turd, made an exhaustive list of what exactly went wrong with the game's development while trying to defend it, and had the guts to insist that "No Stalker chud, it is YOU who killed Highguard. Enjoy prison." Why could this game fail? Everyone who had any connection to the team said it was the next Fortnite! To tie it with a neat little bow at the end, he ends his anti-consumer manifesto by thanking a bunch of journalists who nobody listens to, who don't play games, much less ones like Highguard, but at least they aren't rude or use any of those unpleasant "facts".
It's not only that they can't learn from their mistakes, it's that they actively refuse to learn any lesson.

 

[Safir]

NOT MENTIONED: model must match the design made by the core design team. Implies they let the outsourced labor come up with the designs.

This triggered my 'tism:
She didn't mention this because it's a waste of characters, bad for PR in general, and bad for her post in particular. She was being challenged on her technical expertise and listed points that require expertise and central authority. Checking that the model matches the design only requires at least 1 eye. (And even then receiving inspection is a real job.)

 

[volatile puar]

She didn't mention this because it's a waste of characters

If the studio wasn't allowing the outsourced labor to make their own designs, then the first thing she would have been told is "don't let them make up their own bullshit, it has to stick to the character sheet"

bad for PR in general

Her whole post was very bad for PR. Oops, we informed everyone of exactly how much content was locked away in the Fortnite vault for later updates.

bad for her post in particular

It would be good for her post to clarify that the game was actually designed by the core team, and that the outsourced labor were just extra hands to get it done faster.

he was being challenged on her technical expertise and listed points that require expertise and central authority.

Yea, like making sure it looks like a default UE5 asset, or making sure it actually runs in game. Of course, I'm not saying these take no skill, but they take as much skill and diligence as checking for consistency with the character sheet. Now, I also don't think the outsourced labor was actually given free reign (although it would explain why the characters were so generic), but the reason why she didn't mention it is that she didn't think it was an important part of her job.

 

[NerdShamer]

Yea, like making sure it looks like a default UE5 asset,

Speaking of which, what engine does this runs on? If it's by UE5, I have an reasonably good idea on what they used to design the characters