Last verified 2026-09-22 by ReviewGamers Editorial
BULKHEAD’s 100-player shooter WARDOGS went into Steam Early Access on 10 September 2026 and promptly overwhelmed its own login pipeline. This is what happened during launch week, and in the ten days since, as documented in the developer’s own Steam posts: the stability hotfix, the 1.25 million and then 2 million sales milestones, the 428,666 concurrent peak and Patch 0.11.
What happened
WARDOGS launched into Steam Early Access on 10 September 2026, developed by BULKHEAD and published by Team17. The Australian Steam listing prices it at A$54.95, Windows only, under the Action, Massively Multiplayer and Early Access tags. The pitch, paraphrasing the store page: 100 players split across three teams fighting over a control zone on a battlefield that can be destroyed around them.
Within hours the developer was posting about players unable to join servers, unexpected kicks and long login queues.
Launch Stability Hotfix #1 (10 September)
BULKHEAD’s launch-day post describes the fix: a forced client restart that returned everyone to the login queue, after which players were admitted in controlled batches. The stated goal was to address three problems at once: failed server joins, unexpected kicks and extended queue times. Batching admissions is a blunt instrument, but it is a recognisable way to stop a login system from collapsing under a surge.
Press reports put the queue sizes at more than 300,000. That figure does not appear in BULKHEAD’s own posts, so treat it as not yet confirmed.
1.25 million, then 2 million copies, and a 428,666 peak
On 11 September BULKHEAD announced 1.25 million copies sold, alongside an apology for the delays. Two days later, on 13 September, SteamDB recorded a peak of 428,666 concurrent players, a figure republished on the game’s Steam news hub. BULKHEAD’s own 12 September post thanked players for a 400,000 peak, so the two numbers are different snapshots rather than a contradiction. The studio’s own figures kept climbing: on 15 September, five days after launch, BULKHEAD announced 2 million copies sold.
A press-reported 1.5 million sales figure and a claimed swing in the Steam review summary from Mixed to Very Positive do not appear in any BULKHEAD post and were never confirmed at that specific figure. What is confirmed, checked directly on the live Steam store page, is where the review summary actually landed: Very Positive, from 84% of 46,086 user reviews.
Patch 0.11 shipped 14 September
BULKHEAD’s 12 September announcement scheduled Patch 0.11 for Monday 14 September with roughly an hour of maintenance from 18:00 AEST, and the patch shipped as scheduled. BULKHEAD’s own patch post confirms what changed: the server browser was split into separate Community and Official categories for easier discovery, and a 5% end-of-match cash bonus was added. That built on the pre-load changelog from 9 September, which already listed reworked server-browser filtering, a report-tracking system with weighted reports, cheater bans announced in-server, voice-chat reliability fixes and a balance pass on the Z20 Lakota helicopter.
Community servers run through three approved hosting partners named in BULKHEAD’s 8 September post: QONZER, BisectHosting and xREALM.
Why Australian players care
Two things stand out locally. First, BULKHEAD publishes maintenance windows in AEST, which is unusual and useful; the 0.11 window was a Monday evening slot rather than the middle of the night. Second, at A$54.95 this was a mid-priced early access purchase, and the climb from a rocky login-queue launch to a Very Positive review summary within its first two weeks is a useful data point for anyone deciding whether to buy in now.
The Steam listing sets the minimum at Windows 10, a Core i5 8600 or Ryzen 5 3500, 16 GB of RAM, a GTX 1660 or RX 590 and 50 GB of storage, targeting 1080p Low at 60 fps with upscaling. Recommended is Windows 11, a Core i7 12700K or Ryzen 7 5700X and an RTX 3070 or RX 6700 XT, which BULKHEAD says targets 1440p Medium at 70-plus fps native or 4K Medium at 60-plus fps upscaled.
It is Windows only. Steam Deck compatibility remains Unsupported — ProtonDB shows BULKHEAD working on Proton support with no announced release date — covered separately in WARDOGS on Steam Deck. Console players face a long wait: the launch trailer post states consoles in 2028.
What happened next
Patch 0.11’s server-browser changes shipped without a follow-up hotfix, and BULKHEAD had not published a Season 1 roadmap beyond the pre-load changelog as of this update. For the month’s other big PC release, read the Blood of Dawnwalker hotfix roundup, or browse the PC hub.