Wardogs Beta Draws Nearly 500K Players, Peaks Above 100K on Steam

Priya Anand25/08/20263 min read

Bulkhead’s 100-player tactical shooter Wardogs pulled in nearly half a million unique players during its three-day closed beta on Steam, according to game director Howard Philpott, who shared the figure in a debrief video this week.

PC Gamer reports that

Nearly 500,000 Players Turned Up in a Single Weekend

In a beta debrief video published this week, game director Howard Philpott said nearly 500,000 total players tried Wardogs. “The reaction from the FPS community has been insane,” Philpott said. He noted the turnout arrived in a crowded week for military shooters. The closed beta ran the same week as Call of Duty’s beta and Battlefield 6’s massive update.

Wardogs is not a new name to Steam wishlists. Wardogs has steadily built buzz over the past year, recently eclipsing a million wishlists. PCGamesN corroborates the milestone, reporting that six months since its reveal and one out from release, developer Bulkhead confirmed it’s “humbled” to announce that Wardogs has now made it onto a million Steam wishlists.

Steam Concurrency Hit 105,774, Within 10,000 of Modern Warfare 4

Unique testers are one figure; simultaneous load is another, and Wardogs cleared both comfortably. Developer Bulkhead held a closed beta for those who pre-ordered the $40 early access release, which reached over 100,000 peak Steam players on Sunday, more simultaneous players than Squad, Hell Let Loose, or Arma has ever seen on PC.

French outlet Univers Simu tracked the exact curve via SteamDB. The tactical FPS developed by BULKHEAD and published by Team17 reached precisely 105,774 concurrent players on August 23, according to SteamDB data. The outlet flagged how tight that made the race against gaming’s biggest shooter franchise that same weekend. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s beta reached a peak of 115,145 concurrent players on Steam, putting Wardogs within 10,000 players of Activision’s behemoth on Valve’s platform.

Mobalytics independently confirmed the scale of the result, describing it as the large-scale tactical shooter from developer BULKHEAD and publisher Team17 coming out of its closed beta with real momentum, reportedly pulling in more than 100,000 players.

Control Zone Splits 100 Players Into Three Warring Factions

Part of the draw is a structure most big-lobby shooters skip entirely. WARDOGS is an “all-out warfare” shooter built around matches of up to 100 players, but with a twist most big-lobby shooters don’t share: those players are split across three competing teams rather than the usual two. Its main mode, Control Zone, plays like a large-scale King of the Hill, with the three factions, Valkyra, Lonestar and Manticore, scrapping over a randomised zone inside a much bigger battlefield.

Loadouts aren’t fixed either. Rather than fixed classes, players buy their own loadout from a persistent cash economy that carries between matches, so deciding when to save and when to splurge becomes part of the game. Bulkhead layers vehicles, aircraft, base building and destructible terrain on top of the infantry combat, chasing tactical depth rather than run-and-gun pace.

Early Access Lands September 10 at $40

WARDOGS heads to Steam Early Access on 10 September 2026, where the core 100-player, three-team mode arrives alongside cash and XP progression, vehicles, logistics, proximity voice chat and dynamic objectives. Bulkhead is framing the six-figure test weekend as raw material rather than a victory lap. A six-figure beta turnout gives BULKHEAD plenty of feedback to build on before then.

The studio has already teed up its next public moment. Bulkhead’s official channels point players toward a segment on The FPS Games Show, streamed live on Twitch on September 3, where the team has promised a further announcement ahead of launch.

Bulkhead is a comparatively small studio to be trading blows with a Call of Duty beta on Steam’s concurrent-player charts. For a week in late August, it did exactly that, and September 10 will show whether that crowd sticks around once the free-to-test weekend turns into a paid early access build.