Bulkhead slows Wardogs Season 2 updates, brings Season 3 forward

Bulkhead is slowing Wardogs’ update cadence after Season 2’s difficult rollout and bringing Season 3 forward to Thursday Nov. 12, 2026, executive producer Joe Brammer said on Oct. 25, 2026.

Wardogs Season 2 launched Oct. 15, 2026, introducing the game’s first full progression reset since entering Steam early access in September. The wipe reset Classes and Wardogs rank, while remaining cash converted into Gold Bars that carry over. Matches take place around a contested control zone with three factions and up to 100 players on a destructible battlefield, with cash spent on equipment and vehicles players can lose in fights.

Bulkhead admitted Oct. 17, 2026 that it deliberately sped up progression for Season 2 and sought better balance, but called the move the wrong call. Players reached end-game gear including Tier 4 armor and main battle tanks within days, so the Season 0 progression wipe never really landed. The studio cut the XP needed for role level 20 from 250,000 to 111,500, about a 55% reduction, and moved the T-72B3 main battle tank to Driver level 20 and the Flakpanzer Gepard to level 25. The studio identified a rank progression disparity between players who play a lot and those who play occasionally, and is slowing progression so everyone has more time to advance.

Bulkhead also gave Blue Team a 5% cash and 2.5% XP bonus in Season 2, drawing experienced players who quickly dominated matches before the studio removed the boosts in a hotfix. Joe Brammer called the bonuses an experiment meant to last about a week and said “We f*ed up.” about Season 2. The faction went from worst-performing to dominating every match and attracted the game’s best players.

Bulkhead ruled out wiping everyone’s progress again, saying it would be unfair to players already enjoying the faster climb. The studio cited its pre-Season 2 promise to preserve player freedom as the reason it would not force another reset, and said another wipe would erase progress made over the previous two days.

Recent Steam reviews for Wardogs fell to Mixed after Season 2 began, amid complaints about cheating and no region locking. Steam player counts peaked at nearly 289,000 concurrent players in the past 24 hours even as reviews soured. Brammer said Mixed reviews bring less advertising and few new sales on Steam, while Mostly Negative would force Bulkhead to answer to its board over business and investment issues. He rushed video responses after launch because the algorithm does not advertise games whose recent reviews slip to Mixed, citing one review praising the first 40 or 50 hours and another negative review from a player with 250 hours invested.

Wardogs launched in early access on Sept. 10, 2026, sold over 1 million copies on day one, reached 2 million in under a week, and passed 3 million by September’s end. A closed beta in August 2026 drew about 500,000 players, and day-one sales crashed the servers. The game reached an all-time Steam peak of 428,666 concurrent players while regularly exceeding 100,000 on weekdays and 200,000 on weekends. Nightingale said live service is new to the studio, Bulkhead tests every day, and the game’s success leads people to assume the team is much bigger than it is.

Brammer said the studio cannot do monthly seasons and currently plans three-month season refreshes with a smaller update halfway through. Bulkhead schedules Season 3 for Thursday Nov. 12, 2026, with a fresh economy reset, and will add limited or primitive servers that remove power weapons and vehicles to replicate the low-to-mid game. As of Oct. 17, Bulkhead had not announced a new Season 3 release date but said more details would arrive in a dev vlog the following week.

Brammer said his leadership failed because he kept saying the studio had no plan. He said fears and PTSD from Battalion 1944, for which Bulkhead refunded Kickstarter backers after it failed to keep a player base, drove the rushed Season 2 content. The studio reacted too much to player feedback and rushed new content into Season 2 despite previously insisting it would not add content during early access.

Brammer called stuffing as much content as possible into Season 2 a mistake, saying quality dropped because the team did not iterate and discard ideas the way it normally does, and said the entire Season 2 was too fast even if nothing had changed from Season 1. Mark Tadros said the team meant the faster progression to attract casual players, but the rapid reset worked against exactly that audience. Nightingale said Bulkhead expected players to advance somewhat faster than in Season 1 but underestimated the size of the shift. Bulkhead plans to move away from Season 1’s heavy vertical progression, in which all the best items were at the end of the progression tree.

Nightingale said the studio has considered limiting when certain equipment and vehicles become available but worries doing so would erode the sandbox feel central to Wardogs. Brammer acknowledged the Havoc vehicle respawn problem—players shoot one down and the same player has another a minute later—and said Bulkhead has no solution yet. Pete Harries suggested fuel could provide an answer to progression and vehicle issues, saying Bulkhead has not had time to do something interesting with it.

Season 2 added four weapons with attachments, a Molotov throwable, four vehicles, three structures, rain affecting sound and visibility, and an experimental Wager Vendor that lets players bet in-game money on their own performance. The rain system forces players to strain to hear footsteps and drastically reduces visibility for pilots. Wardogs remains in early access on PC, with a console version planned after the full launch, and Bulkhead has held back features so the game runs on Xbox Series S.