Wardogs Has A Massive Start On Steam, But Players Face Brutal Server Queues
Overview & Key Takeaways
A big new military FPS, Wardogs (not to be confused with the 2016 Jonah Hill/Miles Teller crime-comedy War Dogs) launched today in early access on Steam, and it's off to a hot start. The shooter reached 300,000 peak concurrent users on Steam right out of the gate and the $40 game is currently Steam's No. 1 best-seller. Pretty impressive for a game that the developer told you not to buy.
Given the flood of players, developer Bulkhead instituted a server queue system, and this quickly became something of a meme on social media. Players shared screenshots of the queue and their place in it--some people reported having more than 300,000 people in line in front of them. Yeesh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpQnZgZCIo8
Bulkhead responded to the brutal queueing situation, saying it was partly due to the developer being "rate limited." The company said it was working with Valve to resolve this limit and get an increase in line with "larger titles."
Things got worse, temporarily albeit, for some, as Bulkhead made the decision to kick everyone from the queue as a fix that, in theory, would help more players get into the game faster.
Bulkhead boss Joe Brammer gave an update on the queuing situation, saying the queue itself is not "specifically broken," but instead he said Wardogs didn't get the kind of treatment that AAA games receive when it comes to rate limits.
"Hang in there," Brammer said.
https://twitter.com/Brammflakes/status/2098101353595724112
That wasn't the extent of the launch-day issues, as people reported getting banned for seemingly no reason. Bulkhead said it's aware of these "incorrect bans" and is working to address them immediately.
Wardogs is a large-scale military FPS featuring 100 players, divided into three teams, on a map battling it out in a fictional version of Eastern Europe.
In addition to launching Wardogs into early access, Bulkhead revealed that the game's console edition for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S will be released in 2028.
Update: A hotfix has now been released for Wardogs that targets the ongoing server issues. If you’re logged in and stuck in a queue, you’ll need to close the game to download the update, which will then send you back into a queue once you log in again. Players will be allowed into the game in “controlled batches,” the size of which were not specified, and might portend continued queues for the time being.
More players will be let in as the issues are resolved, but no specific timetable is provided for how long that could take. Alongside the long queues, the patch targets issues with joining servers and an issue causing players to be kicked from matches.
“We will be actively monitoring the ongoing situation post hotfix and will be working through the night to see this resolved,” the developer wrote in a post on Steam. “We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.”
Original story: A big new military FPS, Wardogs (not to be confused with the 2016 Jonah Hill/Miles Teller crime-comedy War Dogs) launched today in early access on Steam, and it’s off to a hot start. The shooter reached 300,000 peak concurrent users on Steam right out of the gate and the $40 game is currently Steam’s No. 1 best-seller. Pretty impressive for a game that the developer told you not to buy.
Given the flood of players, developer Bulkhead instituted a server queue system, and this quickly became something of a meme on social media. Players shared screenshots of the queue and their place in it–some people reported having more than 300,000 people in line in front of them. Yeesh.
VIDEO
Bulkhead responded to the brutal queueing situation, saying it was partly due to the developer being “rate limited.” The company said it was working with Valve to resolve this limit and get an increase in line with “larger titles.”
Things got worse, temporarily albeit, for some, as Bulkhead made the decision to kick everyone from the queue as a fix that, in theory, would help more players get into the game faster.
Bulkhead boss Joe Brammer gave an update on the queuing situation, saying the queue itself is not “specifically broken,” but instead he said Wardogs didn’t get the kind of treatment that AAA games receive when it comes to rate limits.
“Hang in there,” Brammer said.
That wasn’t the extent of the launch-day issues, as people reported getting banned for seemingly no reason. Bulkhead said it’s aware of these “incorrect bans” and is working to address them immediately.
Wardogs is a large-scale military FPS featuring 100 players, divided into three teams, on a map battling it out in a fictional version of Eastern Europe.
In addition to launching Wardogs into early access, Bulkhead revealed that the game’s console edition for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S will be released in 2028. If you’re eager to buy it now, Steam keys for it are discounted at Fanatical.
Disclosure: GameSpot and Fanatical are both owned by Fandom.
