How much is your life worth on the battlefield? In WARDOGS Early Access it is worth exactly $10,000, and you lose it all if you die badly. The tactical shooter from BULKHEAD, published by Team17, lands on PC (Windows, via Steam) on September 10, 2026 in early access. First came the betas, then the hype. Now it is your turn. Coming soon to IndieGala.

Buy WARDOGS on IndieGala:
✦ WARDOGS – Standard Edition
✦ WARDOGS – Supporter Edition

In-Depth

WARDOGS flips the large-scale shooter formula. First, forget the usual two-faction duel. Here one hundred players split across three teams and fight over the same Control Zone.

The map spans 256 km², but the active area is a 2×2 km square placed randomly every match. Therefore you never memorise the routes. Every game forces you to read the terrain again.

Then comes the heart of the design: the economy. You start each life with $10,000 and buy weapons, gear and vehicles from the buy menu. Meanwhile you earn cash by reviving squadmates, holding objectives and playing as a team. Your loot does not vanish at the final whistle: currency persists between matches.

As a result, every choice matters. Spend everything on a tank and you gamble hard. Play safe and you stay poor. Finally, players who find gold bars in the field can trade them and rewrite their own economic story.

What To Expect

✦ Three-faction warfare with up to 100 simultaneous players per match.

✦ Persistent economy: the cash you earn follows you from session to session.

✦ Environmental destruction and base building on the very same battlefield.

✦ 37 weapons and 21 vehicle types, including tanks and helicopters.

✦ Proximity voice chat: you hear enemies coming, and they hear you too.

Gameplay

The mode draws from King of the Hill. First you seize the Control Zone, then you hold it. The first team to reach 100 points wins.

WARDOGS never forces one playstyle. You can snipe from a ridge, drive an armoured vehicle, or build fortifications for your team. Moreover you can play solo or roll with a full squad.

Destruction rewrites the rules. A wall is never permanent cover. Therefore the battlefield evolves minute by minute, and the strong position from ten minutes ago becomes a trap.

Meanwhile proximity voice chat adds real tension. You hear footsteps, engines and enemy voices. As a result, silence becomes a tactical weapon.

Trivia

✦ BULKHEAD is a British studio already known for The Turing Test (2016) and Battalion 1944 (2018).

✦ The studio pitched WARDOGS to Tencent with a £10-12 million budget. The publisher passed. Then Team17 stepped in.

✦ The official announcement landed on February 5, 2026; the gameplay trailer followed on June 6, 2026.

✦ The second closed beta peaked at 245,118 concurrent Steam players. The studio’s internal target was 5,000.

✦ The betas drew nearly 500,000 unique players, and the game passed one million wishlists.

✦ It runs on Unreal Engine 5 and ships without a battle pass or microtransactions during Early Access.

✦ Instead of traditional advertising, BULKHEAD put $100,000 into a community clip contest.

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