Wardogs Closed Beta Draws Nearly 500,000 Players, Bulkhead Says, With More Than 100,000 Concurrent on Steam

Developer Bulkhead Interactive says nearly half a million players tried the Wardogs closed beta over the weekend, in a turnout the studio is openly comparing to the very biggest PC shooters. The figures came in a "Beta Recap & Next Steps" video posted to Bulkhead's official YouTube channel on Monday, just days before the early access launch on September 10.

In the video, game director Howard Philpott said nearly 500,000 unique players logged into the closed beta during the same week as both Call of Duty's Modern Warfare 4 beta and a major Battlefield 6 update. "The reaction from the FPS community has been insane," Philpott said in the recap. PC Gamer's Morgan Park reports that the beta peaked above 100,000 simultaneous Steam players on Sunday alone, which Bulkhead says is more concurrent users than milsim rivals Squad, Hell Let Loose and Arma have ever seen on the platform.

Wardogs is the latest project from Bulkhead, the Derby-based studio best known for Battalion 1944. The pitch is a hardcore, 100-player FPS with three-faction matches, milsim-adjacent ballistics, large maps and restrictive inventories, but with the onboarding loop of an extraction shooter. It is not a battle royale and not an extraction shooter, but the genre drift that PUBG and Escape from Tarkov kicked off has clearly made that mix marketable.

The closed beta was limited to players who pre-ordered the $40 early access release, so the 500,000 figure reflects a self-selected sample rather than the full install base. Bulkhead has not yet broken out total pre-orders or wishlist numbers, and Steam does not publicly separate paid beta access from wishlist activity. Still, Park notes that the timing is striking: a complex, niche-leaning FPS pulling half a million players in the same week as two Call of Duty-sized events suggests an audience that has been waiting for something other than the usual blockbuster template.

Bulkhead's recap also serves as the studio's last big checkpoint before early access. PC Gamer notes that Bulkhead still has a long wishlist of fixes, balance passes and onboarding tweaks to ship in the next two weeks, with the studio promising more frequent community updates and a public roadmap now that the beta has wrapped. The September 10 launch will land on Steam, with console versions still to be confirmed.