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, Wardogs's 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.