How do you report a cheater or griefer in WARDOGS?

Use the reporting tool in the game. Bulkhead's instructions are three steps long:

Pick the player, choose the reason, and add anything that helps us find it, such as the server name and roughly when it happened. Reports come to us, not to the server you were playing on.

That covers cheating, exploiting and abuse alike. If someone is harassing you, you do not have to wait for the report to land: mute and block them straight away.

What happens to a report

A report can carry up to the last 50 text chat messages from that session, so Bulkhead can see what was said. It is reviewed alongside any other reports about the same player and the game's own gameplay and anti-cheat data, and most are dealt with within a few days, serious ones sooner.

You will not usually hear the outcome, and the player you reported is never told who reported them. Since the Season 1 update, reports are also weighted "so that repeat and bad faith reporters carry less influence", and a cheater ban is announced in the server when match termination is turned off — which is the closest thing to seeing a report work.

Make the report count

• Name the server and the time. Voice chat is not recorded, so a voice report depends on it.
• Report once, and let others report too. A pattern of reports against the same player is, in Bulkhead's words, evidence in its own right.
• Do not organise a mass report. Deliberately false or coordinated reports are against the rules, and weighted reports are built to discount them.

On a community server

Community servers are run by the players who rent them, and their admins set their own rules and can kick or ban anyone. Tell them — they can act in the match, Bulkhead cannot. Bulkhead does not review an admin's decisions, but it does want to hear about a server being used to break the rules, and it can pull a server from the browser.

Bugs and exploits are different

The pinned "How to report a problem" thread on the Steam forum is for bugs — crashes, errors, things that do not work — not for players. An exploit sits in between: Bulkhead wants it reported, and treats a video teaching it, "with no regard for reporting the issue", as advertising cheats. What gets you banned for exploits →

If you were the one banned

Only a permanent account ban can be appealed: email [email protected] with your account name and platform, and expect a reply within 30 days. Server restrictions, temporary suspensions and hardware bans are final. The wave of incorrect bans on launch night was handled differently, through Team17 support with your Steam ID. The launch-night ban wave →

For anything else about safety or a report, Bulkhead's address is [email protected]. How the anti-cheat works →