Questions
WARDOGS FAQ
The questions people are actually asking, answered honestly — including the ones where the honest answer is "nobody knows yet".
When does WARDOGS come out?
Confirmed
WARDOGS is out. It launched into Steam Early Access on 10 September 2026 at 16:00 UTC, on PC only, at $39.99. Season 2 starts on 15 October 2026. The studio expects one to two years in Early Access before a full 1.0 release, around September 2028, and console versions are coming in 2028.
How do I get into WARDOGS?
Confirmed
From 16:00 UTC on 10 September 2026 you buy it: WARDOGS is on sale in Steam Early Access at $39.99, with no invite, key, sign-up or queue. Every gate before that is gone. The Closed Alpha in August went through a FirstLook hardware survey, and the two Closed Betas in August and September were guaranteed by pre-order or granted in waves through the Request Access button on Steam. None of those routes exists any more.
How much does WARDOGS cost?
Confirmed
WARDOGS costs $39.99 in Steam Early Access in the United States, with a Supporter Edition at $49.99. Prices are regional: the Eurozone pays €39.99, the UK £36.99, and much of Latin America and Turkey sit on a separate US-dollar tier at $24.99. Both editions went on pre-order on 11 August 2026 ahead of the 10 September launch. WARDOGS is not free-to-play, and Bulkhead has confirmed the game will not be monetised at all during Early Access beyond that one purchase.
What is in the WARDOGS Supporter Edition?
Confirmed
The WARDOGS Supporter Edition costs $49.99 against $39.99 for the standard edition, and the $10 buys cosmetics only: three faction-branded starter weapons, a Littlebird camo, a supporter icon on the scoreboard that can be hidden, and two bobbleheads. It gives no gameplay advantage and no queue priority — Bulkhead describes it as the single exception to its promise not to monetise WARDOGS during Early Access.
Does WARDOGS have classes?
Confirmed
No fixed classes. You buy your weapons, equipment and vehicles with cash before each life, so your role is defined by what you purchased. There are six XP progression tracks, such as Medic and Pilot, but you earn them by using the relevant gear rather than by picking a class before the match.
Will WARDOGS be pay-to-win or have a battle pass?
Confirmed
No. Bulkhead has stated there will be no battle pass and no pay-to-win, and that cosmetics are earned by playing. The game costs $39.99 up front in Early Access, and no store or cosmetic-purchase model has been published.
When was the WARDOGS Closed Alpha?
Confirmed
The first WARDOGS Closed Alpha ran from 7 to 9 August 2026 on Steam, invite only through Bulkhead FirstLook, and has now ended. The next test is the Closed Beta, live from 17:00 UTC on Friday 21 August to 02:00 UTC on Monday 24 August 2026, which runs through Steam instead: pre-ordering guarantees access, or you can request access free on the Steam page for a chance at a place.
Does WARDOGS wipe progress?
Confirmed
Yes, at the end of every season. When a season ends WARDOGS resets your cash and level progression, exchanges leftover cash for Gold Bars, and keeps the Gold Bars and the cosmetics bought with them. The next wipe comes with Season 3, which a Bulkhead developer says starts on 12 November 2026; Bulkhead has not yet posted that date on Steam or X. Season 2 began on 15 October. On its Hot Zone podcast in October the team said seasons after that will run about three months, with a smaller update halfway, and the wipe is staying. Skills, a planned system, will survive the wipe. Gold Market unlocks carry across seasons, and each season changes the order of progression. Closed Beta progress did not carry into Early Access, which Sportskeeda reports Joe Brammer confirmed on X.
Can you get banned for using exploits or XP farming in WARDOGS?
Confirmed
Yes, and since Update 0.1.2 on 30 September the first-offence leniency is over: repeat exploit abuse can now mean a permanent ban without warning. Abusing a cash exploit or bug has meant a timed ban and a reset of your cash and XP to 0. Making content that teaches an exploit without reporting it is a permanent ban, and so is spending more than a few minutes on an XP-farming server. Testing a bug once or twice is not treated as abuse.
What is the official WARDOGS website?
Confirmed
wardogs.com is the official WARDOGS website, run by developer Bulkhead. The Steam store page (app 1867240) is the primary hub for news, and Bulkhead posts as @WARDOGS on X. wardogshub.gg is an unofficial fan site with no affiliation to Bulkhead or Team17 — it reports on WARDOGS, it does not speak for the studio.
Can you switch teams mid-match in WARDOGS?
Reported
Yes, for now. Players report that WARDOGS lets you change team during a match on official servers, and that some use it to cross to the other side and sabotage the team they left. Bulkhead listed Team Switching Controls among its upcoming features on 12 September 2026 without a date or any detail, and has not said whether switching has a cooldown or costs you anything. Deliberate throwing is against Bulkhead's enforcement policy, so report a player who switches sides to wreck your team.
Does WARDOGS have a roadmap?
Confirmed
No dated feature roadmap has been published. What Bulkhead has confirmed: Early Access runs roughly 12 to 24 months, targeting 1.0 at $59.99 around September 2028, with consoles following in 2028. Season 2 starts 15 October 2026. Only one new map is planned during Early Access. In April Bulkhead said players should not expect regular content drops; on 2 October its developers said they are trying to deliver content faster, and the 9 October Season 02 preview named four new weapons, four vehicles, a Molotov, rain and a Wager Vendor for Season 2.
How do you report a cheater or griefer in WARDOGS?
Confirmed
Use the reporting tool inside the game: pick the player, choose the reason, and add the server name and roughly when it happened. Reports go to Bulkhead rather than to the server you were playing on, can include up to the last 50 text chat messages from the session, and are usually dealt with within a few days. On a community server the admins set their own rules, so tell them as well. General and safety enquiries go to support@bulkhead.com, and permanent bans are appealed at appeal@bulkhead.com.
Does WARDOGS support mods?
Unconfirmed
No official mod support, Steam Workshop, or modding tools have been announced. Bulkhead has not ruled it out, but nothing has been confirmed either. Community servers do exist through three approved hosts, with an RCON admin tool for map and mode control, but that is server administration, not modding, and the underlying server code is not released to anyone.
How do you play music in a WARDOGS helicopter?
Reported
You unlock a music tape from the progression screen once you reach the right Driver or Pilot level, equip it like ammo in a vehicle's buy menu — its slot sits to the right of Ammo and Logistics — and play it from the F menu once equipped. It works in helicopters and other player-driven vehicles. No vendor sells it for cash. The one tape Bulkhead has priced publicly, Music Tape H, unlocks at Driver level 23 for $2,500 in Season 1.
What is the Vault in WARDOGS?
Confirmed
The Vault is your personal storage for everything the Black Market delivers — gold bars, items, weapons and vehicles you buy or earn outside a match — and anything in it is redeemable for free the next time you play. Bulkhead has confirmed vault space is capped and permanently upgradeable, but has not published a starting capacity or an upgrade cost.
Is there a WARDOGS stats tracker?
Unconfirmed
Not an official one. Tracker.gg runs a WARDOGS page, but it tracks aggregate Steam concurrent-player population, not individual match or career stats. Bulkhead has not announced an official stats site or API, and whether WARDOGS has an in-game career stats screen showing your own K/D and history is unconfirmed — we could not find one documented.
Can you skip the WARDOGS tutorial?
Reported
There is no official skip button, but players report a workaround: once you land in the tutorial, press Esc, wait about 15 to 30 seconds until Leave Match unlocks, then leave the match. Players say that is enough to move on. Bulkhead has not confirmed or documented this.
How big is WARDOGS?
Confirmed
The download is 50 GB, listed by Steam for both the minimum and recommended specs — there is no smaller option. That is separate from the map: each of the three WARDOGS maps is 256 km² (16 x 16 km), which is the size of the in-game world, not the install. Matches hold up to 100 players across three teams.
Are macros, VoiceAttack or key remapping software allowed in WARDOGS?
Confirmed
Macros are not. Bulkhead's enforcement policy bans "using macros, scripts or hardware devices to automate inputs or gain an advantage that normal play doesn't allow", and the EULA counts "tools that simulate or replace human input" as cheating. Bulkhead has not said anything about voice-command tools like VoiceAttack or accessibility software, and there is no accessibility exception in either document. If you rely on one, ask Bulkhead support before you use it.
Can you change your name in WARDOGS?
Reported
Not inside the game, as far as players can tell. WARDOGS shows your Steam profile name, and there is no separate in-game name to edit, so the way to change it is to change your Steam name. Names using decorative Unicode fonts show up blank in game. Bulkhead has not published anything on name changes, cooldowns or a rename option.
A note on the unsettled answers
Six of these answers are not yet fully settled. That is deliberate. WARDOGS is a pre-release game and the pressure on a site like this is to fill those gaps with a confident guess, because a confident guess ranks. We would rather be the page you can trust in October than the one that got the click in August.
It cuts the other way too. When Bulkhead does answer something, we upgrade the label — the console and monetisation answers were both marked unconfirmed here until we traced them to Bulkhead's own posts.