Insomniac's community lead says the Wolverine backlash is relentless
After Marvel’s Wolverine previews went live, mockery of the PS5 exclusive spread fast enough that Insomniac’s community director publicly questioned whether developers should be on X at all. Some of the anger isn’t even about the game.
Marvel’s Wolverine is a month from release, and the loudest thing around it right now is the pile-on.
Previews went live on August 13. What followed was less discussion than meme, comparisons to Ben 10 and PS2-era action games, jokes about character models, mockery of a red smoke trail in a chase sequence.
By Friday, James Stevenson, Insomniac’s director of community and marketing, had seen enough to say something.
What he said
Stevenson didn’t defend individual clips. He questioned the platform.
“I think the wild way this algorithm amplifies and forces negativity upon you has me reconsidering my philosophy on telling devs to look or post here,” he wrote on X. “It’s a relentless onslaught that I cannot believe is good for anyone’s mental health nor representative.”
His position is that what the feed surfaces isn’t what the response actually looks like, and the written previews were reportedly far warmer than the clips circulating from them.
He kept posting through the weekend anyway, thanking fans, marking the 30-day countdown, replying to someone who bought a PS5 in 2023 off the original Wolverine teaser.
What the criticism is actually about
Some of it is straightforward, and Insomniac can’t really argue with it.
The previews confirmed Marvel’s Wolverine is a more conventional action game than the Spider-Man titles, and a chunk of the reaction is people finding that unremarkable. That’s a fair thing to say about a game. Whether it holds up depends on the finished product, out September 15 exclusively on PS5.
Then there’s the part that isn’t about the game at all.
Sony is winding down PlayStation disc production in 2028, a decision that went over badly and has been generating steady anger for months. Insomniac is a Sony studio, so its comment sections have become a convenient place to put that anger. As one outlet described it, the studio got caught in the crossfire of an entirely separate fight.
The distinction worth keeping
There’s a real line between criticizing a game and dogpiling the people who made it, and it gets blurry fast at this volume.
“This looks like a generic action game” is criticism. Insomniac has to live with that, and shipping a big-budget exclusive means accepting people will say unkind things about it in public.
A sustained wave of mockery that a community manager describes as relentless is a different animal, particularly at a studio that had 1.6 terabytes of internal data stolen and leaked in a 2023 ransomware attack, including early Wolverine builds. That team has spent three years watching its unfinished work get picked apart in public.
Stevenson’s point wasn’t that people should stop criticizing the game. It was narrower and harder to dismiss: that the version of the response an algorithm serves you is not the response, and that pointing developers at it may not be doing them any favors.
The game arrives September 15. Until then, the loudest opinions about it will come from people who haven’t played it, which is true of every game and has never once slowed anybody down.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Kotaku (August 2026), verified for Stevenson’s full quote, the preview sit-downs confirming a more straightforward action game than the Spider-Man series, and the response being led by memes rather than the written takeaways
The Gamer (August 2026), verified for the Ben 10 and character-model mockery, the red smoke trail detail, the 2023 ransomware attack and 1.6 terabytes of leaked data including early Wolverine builds, and Insomniac being caught in the crossfire of the disc backlash
Cosmic Book News (August 2026), verified for the August 13 preview embargo, Stevenson’s role and continued posting through the weekend, the 30-day countdown post, and the September 15 PS5 exclusive release
Tech4Gamers and Playfront (August 2026), verified for the connection between the backlash and Sony’s decision to end physical discs, the criticism that the game brings nothing new, and Stevenson considering advising developers to avoid the platform