A Call of Duty and Battlefield competitor just moved its release date forward

Polygon RSS Feed✍ Ford James📅 June 4, 2026⏱ 2 min read(3 months ago)

Overview & Key Takeaways

Wardogs, the next game from Bulkhead, is being released into early access sooner than expected due to pre-release feedback from testers.

Release date delays are all too common in the games industry, and it's highly unusual for a game to be ready to launch sooner than its developers planned. Wardogs, an upcoming first-person shooter from Bulkhead, finds itself in that rare scenario. According to the team behind the game, Wardogs will launch into early access on Steam much sooner than expected, after pre-release testing feedback was "very positive."

A statement posted to the game's official X account reads: "We have reached an inflection point in our journey. The feedback from thousands of testers is very positive, players are telling us our performance and optimization has exceeded their expectations, and most importantly, they're saying the game is fun. As a result, we have made the decision to bring forward our early access release date. Wardogs will be releasing into early access later this summer."

According to its Steam page, Wardogs bills itself as a "tactical all-out warfare FPS where 100 players split across three teams fight over the control zone." From trailers, it looks very Battlefield-inspired, but in a Q&A video earlier this year, the team made clear that they're aiming for a sweet spot between more arcade-focused shooters and those that are more "realistic."

The statement also explains that studio is tempering its expectations: "Our goal was never to be the biggest FPS. It was to build a healthy, sustainable community and to learn from past mistakes and apply those lessons to Wardogs. We have planned to sustain a community of 3,000 to 5,000 players, and anything beyond that is a bonus."

You may recall Battalion 1944, Bulkhead's 2019 FPS, which offered a highly competitive environment, similar to Counter-Strike and Valorant in its precision shooting mechanics, and saw considerable success. However, according to a statement on Bulkhead's website, the game and studio as a whole "couldn't sustain the player base required to be a mass market shooter we dreamed of long term." As a result, support for Battalion 1944 was eventually halted, and the game now exists only as Battalion: Legacy and has almost no players, according to SteamDB.

As a result, there are plenty of eyes on Bulkhead with the launch of Wardogs, and due to the studio's previous success launching an FPS, high expectations to boot. A new gameplay trailer will be shown during the Future Games Show at 3 p.m. EDT on Saturday, June 6.

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Wardogs Devs Are Watching Economy Cheaters Like Hawks

With the FPS Wardogs(https://www.gamespot.com/games/wardogs/) dominating the Steam charts, developer Bulkhead is paying close attention to the game's various systems. The studio recently dropped a new patch that makes some necessary changes(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wardogs-patch-notes-scheduled-maintenance-and-patch-0-11/) for server stability, while confirming that the team has their eyes on cheaters and exploiters. As part of Patch 0.11(https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1867240/view/701027323413005176?l=english), which came out on September 14, Bulkhead announced that should any dogs of war take advantage of Wardogs' economy by farming servers, they'll find themselves either temporarily or permanently banned from the game. "As an early access game, we’re not perfect, and we never will be," Bulkhead said in the patch notes. "But if you do find something and take advantage of it, we have decided to come down hard." To be specific, Bulkhead outlined three different scenarios that will come with three different repercussions depending on the type of exploit you partake in. Scenario 1: Stockpiling money by abusing cash exploits and bugs will result in a timed ban, with the length determined by whether you were banned previously. Your cash and experience will get reset, too. Scenario 2: Showing economy exploits through tutorial content will be treated as "advertising cheats," resulting in a permanent ban. However, if you happen to stumble upon an exploit and share that with Bulkhead on Discord or social media, that'll be seen as an "alert," which prevents you from being permanently banned. Scenario 3: If you're farming experience via server exploits, which Bulkhead says will result in "the most serious bans," your account will get banned permanently. The studio clarified, though, that it's open to feedback on this policy, stating that these positions could change if enough people believe they're too harsh. "In the very early stages of finding these issues you may find yourself getting away with it, but it doesn't take long for our backend data to flag abusers," Bulkhead said, "Effectively, if you find something and you then keep doing it, over and over again, that is abuse of an exploit. If you figure something out and test it once or twice, no biggy, thanks for helping us QA." Wardogs is currently Steam's hottest game right now, with over 320,000 people playing at the time of writing. It didn't have the smoothest of starts(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wardogs-has-a-massive-start-on-steam-but-players-face-brutal-sever-queues/), but the kinks are getting ironed out as the days go on. Players are a little riled up at the moment, though, particularly because people don't know how to close the door behind them(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wardogs-players-really-want-you-to-close-the-doors-or-else/).

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Wardogs Players Really Want You To Close The Doors … Or Else

The hottest game on PC right now is Wardogs(https://www.gamespot.com/games/wardogs/), the Battlefield-like mass multiplayer FPS by developer Bulkhead that's soaring up the Steam charts. While it may not be as hot as the game itself, the game's subreddit is full of hotheads demanding you do one teeny-tiny thing. Close. The. Doors. Behind. You. Released in a closed beta state in August 2026 before entering early access in September 2026, Wardogs has taken PC gaming by storm. It's not only the number-one trending game(https://steamdb.info/stats/trendingfollowers/) according to SteamDB, with an all-time peak of 428,666 concurrent players on September 13(https://steamdb.info/app/1867240/charts/), but it's also the fourth-most-played game on Steam(https://steamdb.info/charts/), trailing behind Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds. Folks can't get enough of being a dog of war. Something folks would love to get enough of, though? Players leaving those gosh-darn doors and gates open when venturing out onto the battlefield. All over the official Wardogs subreddit are a ton of players decrying the carelessness of other players when it comes to not closing doors and gates behind them. Redditor demonmit1 posted on September 14(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wfvgws/stopbuildingsomanygates/), pleading for people to stop building so many gates and close the ones they open. "If you're helping build a FOB, please… We only need one air locked gate for logistics," demonmit1 said. "No one closes them anyways, so adding more is not good. Stop it. If someone wants to leave the base, they can jump over a wall. They don't need to leave through a door they'll forget to close." https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wdpm7n/closeyourfobgatesplease/ "PSA: stop leaving my doors and gates open at my fobs," wrote Redditor novastar17 on September 12(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1we3cmr/psastopleavingmydoorsandgatesopenatmy/). "i have been trying to build mortar complexes and random allies come open doors and let enemies in to just wipe all of us while im busy building. stop that, thanks." "There should be upgraded doors / gates that auto shut after a few seconds," user GOpencyprep suggested on August 23(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1vwmx4f/spendingsomuchtimebuildingupafobonlyto/) in a very potty-mouthed Reddit post. "Or teammates who forget to close the door behind them should be fired into the sun...one or the other. Seriously though this is a problem." What these FOBBs, or Forward Operating Base builders(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/what-is-a-fob-in-wardogs-and-why-do-you-need-one/), are talking about are the doors and gates you can add when constructing bases that act as central operating hubs for your team. These FOBs allow you to create fortified defenses, as well as construct weapons and other armaments to keep your team ready for when the fighting gets particularly intense. Unfortunately, because the doors and the gates don't close behind you once opened, this gives the enemy team the opportunity to waltz in, shoot up the place, and leave as if they were invited in the first place. Even though only you and your teammates can open and close doors and gates, meaning the enemy can't just pry your FOB open, leaving any access point open leaves you, ahem, open to a raid. You can imagine how frustrating this would be. https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wf7gwf/friendlytutorialonhowtoclosedoors/ "While Servers are down CLOSE THE DAMN DOORS," Redditor xMrStonex put it bluntly on September 14(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wfxm4d/whileserversaredownclosethedamndoors/). "Title. Thank you." "I get killed so often when using mortars or working on the FOB, because lazy people can't be bothered to close the door when they leave the FOB," AutomaticReach32 suggested on September 14(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wfdd2x/paypeopleforclosingdoors/). "You can't force people to close the doors, but I think this could be helped with some monetary encouragement. Pay people if they close the door behind them! Nothing game changing, something modest like the revive / heal tips, $15 to players who close the door, reward good behavour!!" "I just have to say one thing," Icy-Sock-2388 said in the title of their September 5 Reddit post(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1w8fihl/ijusthavetosayonething/). "CLOSE THE FING DOORS! Countless times now I've meticulously spent tens of thousands to rapidly build a mortar, AA, and respawn fob...only for it to be taken by the enemy because they casually walked through the front door, past the multi-layered airlocks, into the tower airlock, and then into the fob airlock room because EVERY one of those doors was open." There have been some threats in the subreddit(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wbhwt7/theonlyrealwayoffixingtheproblemofpeople/), too! It's really just people announcing that, if you leave a FOB door or gate open, you'll get a chest full of lead from your own team(https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wdpm7n/closeyourfobgatesplease/) if the enemy team hasn't pumped you full of it already. Clearly, no one wants to let the AC out and the enemies in. Speaking of being let in, Wardogs suffered brutal server queues(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wardogs-has-a-massive-start-on-steam-but-players-face-brutal-sever-queues/) once it entered early access. Thankfully, Bulkhead released a hotfix that kinda-sorta addresses the long server wait times, but you may still encounter the dreaded WD-L014 Error Code. We've broken down how to get past that(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-to-fix-the-wardogs-wd-l014-error-code/) so you can be a dog of war again.

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