There is a second Closed Beta, and it starts on Thursday 3 September — seven days before WARDOGS opens into Early Access. Bulkhead announced it this morning on Steam and on @WARDOGS, and said plainly why it did not wait:
"We planned to save this announcement for the FPS Games Show, but we don't want the hype to get out of control, so… WARDOGS Closed Beta. Starting September 3rd. This is a REAL test. Come break things."
That reverses the position the site has carried since 24 August, when the first beta's servers shut and nothing further was announced. There is a way to play WARDOGS before launch again.
When, exactly
The Steam post puts the start "right after The FPS Games Show", and dates the show itself:
"The FPS Games Show - Sept 3rd / 18:00 UTC / 2 PM EDT / 7 PM BST"
So 18:00 UTC on 3 September is the floor rather than the opening bell. Bulkhead published a schedule card with hours on it for the first beta and has not done so for this one, and it has given no end date at all — not a Sunday close, not a run straight into launch. Anyone planning a weekend around it is planning around a day, not a window. We will restamp the beta page the moment a schedule appears.
Pre-order is guaranteed, everything else is a wave
"Pre-Order now to guarantee access - with limited access being handed out in waves."
The two routes are the ones that ran in August: a pre-order at $39.99 buys a certain place, and the free Request Access button on the Steam page buys a chance at one. What has changed is the shape of the second route. Bulkhead pre-empted the obvious question with a heading of its own — Why not an open beta? — and answered it:
"To validate the stability of our systems properly we will be increasing the number of Steam Playtest invitees in waves rather than opening the beta completely."
Which means an empty Steam library on Thursday evening is not a rejection, the same way it was not one in August. It is the queue working as designed.
This does put the pre-order question back where it was a fortnight ago. Since 24 August a pre-order bought nothing you could not buy on the 10th for the same money. From today it buys a week of play again.
What Bulkhead says it is testing
The most interesting line in the post is the list of systems:
"…areas of the game that only break at scale, such as server scaling and browsing, Twitch Drops, DLC entitlements, VOIP and our login queue."
None of them is a gun or a map. Twitch Drops are the pointed one: the drop integration is what was hurting server stability in August, and it is why the first beta opened half an hour late. Bulkhead said at the time that would not be repeated at Early Access, and it is now re-running that exact integration under load a week out — which is what testing it properly looks like. DLC entitlements are the Supporter Edition's contents actually granting themselves, a launch-day failure mode rather than a gameplay one. Server browsing and the login queue are the two things that decide whether 10 September feels like a launch or a queue.
Read together, this is not a content test. It is the plumbing under a launch, run in public a week before that launch, which is the most useful thing a studio in this position can do with the time it has left.
The show still has something on it
Bulkhead was explicit that giving the beta away early cost it an announcement and that it has another one:
"Whilst announcing this Closed Beta early is one less announcement we were planning to drop at The FPS Games Show - we still have a HUGE announcement that no one will see coming…"
There is no basis to guess at what it is. The standing unknowns worth watching are the ones this hub has tracked all year and Bulkhead has never dated: a console version it has committed to without a window, and crossplay, which is only a real question once consoles have one. The show runs 18:00 UTC on Twitch.
How to get into Beta 02 → · Live outage tracker → · Steam concurrent count →