Wardogs has run into major server issues following its Sept. 10 Early Access launch, with large numbers of players reporting long queues and difficulties getting into matches. The problems have prompted negative Steam reviews and criticism across social media, while Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer has responded to the situation as the studio works to stabilize the game.
What Are Wardogs’ Issues?
The biggest issue affecting Wardogs’ launch was, and continues to be, server capacity. More than 300,000 players tried to play yesterday evening and through the night, with the game’s servers subsequently going offline. Many players also reported exceptionally long queue times that ended in the game crashing or an “Access Denied” message.
Wardogs had already attracted more than 200,000 concurrent players during its final closed beta, considerably exceeding Bulkhead’s expectations. The developer had used that test to put additional pressure on its infrastructure before release, but the launch still produced a much larger wave of players than anticipated.
Several fixes were rolled out during the night but they came too late to stop disgruntled players review-bombing Wardogs across Steam and social media. At the time of writing, the game was sitting at a Mixed rating on Steam with 23,874 reviews.
Many players described the launch as unacceptable, especially given the recent stress-test closed beta, while others have argued that negative reviews are understandable when a multiplayer game can’t be accessed.
Other players across Reddit and the game’s Discord have said that they’re still entitled to criticize a game that isn’t accessible since they’ve paid for it, with some even suggesting Bulkhead gave priority access to streamers over paying customers. Bulkhead has neither confirmed nor denied this to be the case, although the game did display a message from Brammer referencing this, as shown on the Wardogs Reddit.
What Has Bulkhead Said About Wardogs’ Launch Problems?
Bulkhead’s Joe Brammer posted regular updates on X as to what was going on during the night. “We are letting people through in waves,” he said, alongside an image showing 135,584 people queuing. “I gotta take the L on this one guys, we’ve got it but it’s on me here. This is why we release on a Thursday.”
A few hours later he posted that the main server queue issues had been resolved. “For the last 30 minutes the queue has been at zero. If you’re still complaining about the queue to get into an FPS that’s peaking higher than Dota…you’re the problem.”
Brammer also said the studio was dealing with rate limits from Valve and that Bulkhead was working with Valve to resolve the issue (in short, Valve authenticates players to let them play, but didn’t have the capacity to let all authorized players through). As of the time of writing, Steam DB was showing 174,285 players in-game; this peaked at 340,171 during the night.
The majority of complaints are now being kept to the game’s Discord, with Bulkhead posting “We’re back on it today. We see the messages, tags, errors, best moments, screenshots, streams and videos. Working through it all.”
Wardogs is currently in Early Access on PC via Steam, where it’s already shifted 1.25 million copies. The developers expect it to be between one and two years before a full 1.0 release arrives, giving them plenty of time to iron out further server issues. It’s also slated for release on consoles in 2028.
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