Wardogs

Wardogs (stylised in all caps) is an upcoming first-person shooter video game developed by Bulkhead and published by Team17. It was released into closed beta on 22 August 2026 and into early access for Windows on 10 September 2026, with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S releases scheduled for 2028. Inspired by the "King of the Hill" custom gamemode mod for Arma 3, Wardogs has players join one of three mercenary factions fighting a multi-sided battle over a randomised control zone in the mountains of the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe.

In-game, 100 players are split into three teams of 33 players each. Wardogs features a quasi-virtual economy in which players have in-game cash and must manage their finances to purchase their own equipment and vehicles while accounting for factors such as affordability, risk of equipment loss, and overall profits. Despite revolving around currency, Wardogs does not feature any microtransactions, such as an item shop or a battle pass system.

The development of the game took several years, with it first being pitched to Tencent with a budget of £10 million to £12 million. Disagreements between Bulkhead and Tencent led to Bulkhead joining Team17 and Wardogs being announced in February 2026 and marketed as a "Tactical All Out Warfare". Wardogs received positive reception upon early access release, with over two million copies sold and over 400,000 peak concurrent players within less than a week. It was also directly competing against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on Steam's charts for the number one spot.

Before the early access launch, testers of the game said it exceeded expectations. Around or over £52.2 million in revenue was generated from Wardogs, putting it at number seven for Steam's 2026 list of new games. When launching into early access on 10 September 2026, Wardogss servers went offline temporarily due to a high amount of traffic in-game. This sparked a significant wave of "review bombing" on its Steam page with players angry because it seem as live streamers were able to connect to servers with no issues or loading times.

Gameplay

Wardogs is a player-versus-player tactical shooter, in which players are affected by realistic factors and can be killed quickly. The game is set in an implied alternate history in the fictional Caucasus region in Eastern Europe that is contested by three private military companies: Lonestar (blue) from the West, Valkyra (red) from the Soviet People's Republic, and Manticore (green) from the Kingdom of Persia. Servers of up to 100 players are split into three teams representing these PMCs (maximum of 33 players each), who fight for a 2×2 kilometre "Control Zone" placed randomly on a larger 256-square-kilometre map. The team with the most players in the Control Zone scores a point every ten seconds, which can be boosted by holding a much smaller slowly-moving "Hot Zone" within the Control Zone that counts players within it as double. Across the map are towers containing digits of a code that, when completed, can force the Hot Zone to move toward a tower; teams can also build drills, which can draw the Hot Zone toward them while active. As a way to help hold positions in and around the Control Zone, players can build structures with hammers and supplied building materials, with the ability to establish forward operating bases that offer greater structure and emplacement options and can serve as team rallying points, though they must be continuously supplied.

The main gimmick of Wardogs is its "cash is king" style of play, derived from Arma 3'''s "King of the Hill" custom gamemode. Each player's account in Wardogs starts with $10,000 in in-game cash, which can be used to purchase an assortment of weapons, equipment, ammunition, attachments, vehicles, helicopters, and supplies for themselves and their team. These purchases, except initial unlocks, are not persistent and exist in the match only, but cash is persistent across matches, forcing players to be wise with their purchases, consider the risks of taking expensive equipment and vehicles to the front, and aim for a personal profit by the end of the match (with profits for their current life displayed next to the cash counter on the HUD). Cash is a significant factor in gameplay, with certain tasks and actions such as kills, assists, transporting, supplying allies, and being in the Control Zone or Hot Zone all providing payment, creating financial incentives for playing support roles such as logistics, military engineering, or airlifting instead of prioritising combat. In turn, players must use their cash for a large number of actions, such as buying gear and supplies, repairing their vehicles, or taking items from supply crates ("purchased" from the player that delivered the supply crate, who can also apply a markup to their supplies for greater profit, at risk of potentially making them too expensive and unappealing).

Players can use cash as part of interactions and cooperation, such as paying vehicle drivers for a "taxi ride", offering cash as a "bribe" when incapacitated to encourage being revived, and giving small tips to players for transporting or reviving them. Players can bet wagers on certain events and tasks, such as a player betting whether or not they can get a certain amount of kills in one life. Cash could also serve a role in the game's anticheat system. Cash, XP, and unlocks reset for all players with every season, but cash can be exchanged for gold bars, which are safe from seasonal resets, have a simulated exchange rate, and can be used to purchase cosmetics and emotes. These gold bars are the only way to acquire these items, and the cash exchange is the only way to acquire gold bars; Wardogs is not planned to have microtransactions nor a battle pass.

Development and release

Development of Wardogs took several years and first started in Derby, England, with the engine of choice being Unreal Engine 5. Bulkhead initially pitched the game's concept to the studio's prior owner, Tencent, with a budget of around £10 million and £12 million. However, Tencent insisted on a larger and more expensive production and was confused and suspicious of Bulkhead's development doctrine that discouraged "throwing money at people and problems"; Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer likewise disdained Tencent's mandated corporate direction, and considered quitting and closing down Bulkhead if another buyer for the studio could not be found.

Ultimately, Bulkhead left Tencent in 2025 and joined a consortium with video game publisher Team17, making Wardogs a predominantly British production. Wardogs was announced on 5 February 2026 by Team17 with the tagline of "Tactical All Out Warfare". On 6 June 2026, a gameplay trailer was released to Bulkhead's YouTube channel; it was also revealed at Future Games Show Summer Showcase. During the development of Wardogs, Bulkhead laid off several workers, which directly affected QA testing.

A showcase of the full game was livestreamed on Twitch on 3 September 2026. According to the developers, they are working on Proton and Linux support for the game. Wardogs launched into a closed beta on 22 August 2026 for people who pre-ordered it, and it released into early access on 10 September 2026. On 7 September, it was announced that BisectHosting would be a hosting partner to balance server performance standards before launch. Although the game was slated for release on 10 September, it was released on September 11 in certain timezones. As a part of the game's launch, Bulkhead announced that Wardogs will be ported to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S in 2028.

Reception

Commercial performance According to Steam statistics, Wardogs reached the top of its charts at number one within hours of the early access launch, directly competing with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, which entered early access on the same day. It also had over one million Steam wishlists. According to reports, Wardogs had thousands of testers that gave very positive feedback, with some also saying performance and optimisation have exceeded expectations. Jokingly, the developers posted a video to YouTube titled "Ten Reasons Not to Buy Wardogs" in which they explain what Wardogs is and to "look into it more" when purchasing it. Nearly 500,000 players played the closed beta, and it had over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam at one point.

Before Wardogs was released, Joe Brammer said he expected the player count to decrease as "hype dies down". In September 2026, Wardogs surpassed 300,000 concurrent players on Steam and sold one million copies on its first day in early access, and by day two, it had sold 1.25 million. Several sources reported that as of September 15, Wardogs had a peak player count of exactly 428,666 and over two million copies sold. In response, Bulkhead posted to X saying, "Thank you all. Beyond humbled", and "We made a game we wanted to play with friends. Watching you play it with yours has been the best". Polygon called Wardogs one of the "best FPS games of the decade" in an article they wrote. Over £52.2 million in revenue was generated from the game, putting it at number seven for Steam's 2026 list of new games in terms of revenue. Joe Brammer said in a social media post that it was a struggle to deal with DDoS attacks and that it was a "persistent problem since launch". He also said the game had to up its security due to cheaters, saying that, "We feel a bit out of control with how big things have gone and how much extra security we have been forced to do". On 27 September 2026, Wardogs surpassed 3 million copies sold.

Critical reception Due to a high number of users trying to play, Wardogs''s servers temporarily struggled to queue matches, making Bulkhead take the game offline while they fixed it, although the servers later came back up. Joe Brammer said that it was most likely due to Valve Corporation rate-limiting the game. During the hours that the servers were offline, a wave of negative reviews sparked on Steam, and the Steam page was set to a status of "Mixed". Most reviewers were outraged that it appeared that streamers were able to skip login queues while regular players had to wait. In a clip captured by live streamer TheBurntPeanut, the developers explicitly admitted, "We are dick heads" via the server announcements tab in response to the backlash.

Wardogs

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