Wardogs Developer Slows Update Plan After Rocky Season 2

Wardogs developer Bulkhead plans to slow its update schedule after Season 2’s rapid progression and rushed content affected the game’s quality. Season 3 is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 12, and will include an economy reset and limited servers that restrict access to powerful weapons and vehicles.

Bulkhead announced the accelerated Season 3 timetable during Season 2’s first weekend. Creative Director Tim Nightingale acknowledged that the announcement could make players question how much time to invest before the next reset.

“We’ve got to slow down,” Executive Producer Joe Brammer said. “We can’t do monthly seasons. We can’t keep up.” Bulkhead is considering three-month seasons with a smaller update halfway through each cycle.

The studio expected players to progress faster than they had during Season 1, when the game and its systems were new. However, it underestimated the scale of the change. Technical Designer Mark Tadros said the faster progression was intended to appeal to more casual players, while the early Season 3 reset reduced the time available to that audience.

Brammer described Bulkhead’s decision to prioritize new content over the game’s core multiplayer systems as “a huge mistake.” The team had initially planned to focus on those systems during early access, but concerns about a lack of content changed its approach.

“We didn’t double down on everything,” Brammer said. “We just pushed it out and went, ‘Look, there’s loads of content.’ They went, ‘Yeah, okay, but the XP is broken.’”

Brammer connected the decision to Bulkhead’s experience with Battalion 1944, whose player base declined after launch. The studio later refunded Kickstarter backers. He said concerns from that project affected decisions on Wardogs and led the team to react too strongly to player feedback.

Season 3 will introduce “primitive,” or limited, servers intended to recreate the game’s low-to-mid progression period. These servers will exclude power weapons and vehicles. Nightingale said Bulkhead plans to begin with one shared experience while it studies player preferences and considers additional server types.

The studio is also reviewing Wardogs’ progression system, which places much of the strongest equipment at the end of the progression tree. Bulkhead has discussed limiting when certain weapons and vehicles become available. Nightingale cautioned that wider restrictions could reduce the sandbox elements of the game.

The developers addressed complaints about players quickly replacing destroyed vehicles. Brammer acknowledged that a player can destroy a Havoc and encounter the same player in another one soon afterward. Lead Game Designer Pete Harries suggested that a fuel system could help, though Bulkhead has not finalized a solution.

Brammer linked the studio’s public response to Season 2 to concerns about Steam user reviews and sales. He said recent reviews had fallen to “mixed” and that a further decline could reduce the game’s visibility to potential buyers. Bulkhead has asked players to consider updating their reviews if their view of Wardogs improves, while stating that players should not change ratings they still consider accurate.

Season 3 remains scheduled for Nov. 12. Bulkhead plans to use the faster release to address Season 2’s problems, while reducing the pace of future major updates and spending more time testing core changes.