Wardogs

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 a 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, who fight for a 2 kilometre diameter "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 thirty 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.

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. 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 shown at the Future Games Show Summer Showcase. During the development of Wardogs, Bulkhead laid off several workers, which directly affected QA testing.

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. Nearly 500,000 players played the closed beta, with over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam at one point; playtesters provided very positive feedback, with some saying performance and optimisation exceeded expectations.

Wardogs surpassed 300,000 concurrent players on Steam and sold 1 million copies on 10 September, its first day in early access. By 15 September, Wardogs had a peak player count of 428,666 and recorded over 2 million copies sold; on 27 September, sales surpassed 3 million copies. 2 million in revenue was generated from sales within its first week, putting it at #7 in Steam's 2026 list of new games in terms of revenue. Brammer reported that Bulkhead had been struggling to deal with DDoS attacks since launch and that the developers felt "a bit out of control with how big things have gone and how much extra security we have been forced to do".