Bulkhead is banning 185,000 WARDOGS accounts for cheating, in a wave that began on 6 November. In its Road to Season 3 devlog, the studio says it analysed 187 million hours of gameplay with the help of machine learning and AI, and that 4.89% of players worldwide used some kind of external modification software (Confirmed). The bans were going out as the video went live. Bulkhead puts WARDOGS at nearly 4 million unique players, so 185,000 accounts is a little under one in twenty.
What counts as cheating?
Any external software that interacts with WARDOGS in a way the game does not officially support. The devlog names aim aids, recoil aids and fire-rate manipulation as examples, and says all of them are bannable (Confirmed). Bulkhead expects some banned players to say they did nothing wrong, and says these tools count as cheating "for the greater good of legitimate players".
That matters for anyone running mouse or keyboard macros. A recoil macro in your mouse software is external software that aids recoil. Bulkhead has not named any specific program, but by its own definition a recoil macro qualifies.
Why did it take this long?
Bulkhead says it waited on purpose. To train its detection models, it let cheaters keep refining their cheats so the team could watch them change, and build case reports on players "attempting to hide in the dark" (Confirmed). The studio says it planned to switch on the extra anti-cheat layers much later in 2027, because it expected far fewer players. With nearly 4 million players after launch, it moved that forward.
It also says it could not reveal what it was doing until now, and apologised to players who felt nothing was happening.
Which regions had the most cheaters?
The devlog shows the share of flagged players by region but only states one figure: 5.7% of copies sold in the EU were flagged for cheating (Confirmed). Global, it says, is 4.89%, and colleagues across the industry told the team that "isn't even that bad". The other regional numbers appear only on a chart in the video.
What happened to the boosting servers?
Bulkhead says it gathered data on exploiting, real-money trading and gold farming through Seasons 1 and 2, then went after the servers people used to farm cash and XP (Confirmed). The devlog shows developers joining one such server, setting players' cash to minus 100 million, resetting their XP to level zero and ending the match.
Every player on those servers was banned. The owners lost the right to host servers, and Bulkhead says the money they paid for WARDOGS cannot be refunded. Players who bought VIP slots on the servers were banned too. The studio says it can now see these networks, including who connected and who is friends with whom, and will watch them more closely. Which server hosts are approved →
Will there still be cheaters?
Yes, and Bulkhead says so. The devlog calls this a cycle: cheaters cheat, players report them, they are flagged, and they are banned in waves. A player trust score is planned for next year, which Bulkhead says will put more control in players' hands. It has given no further detail (Confirmed as planned, no date).
Why is Bulkhead asking for reviews?
Bulkhead expects the banned players to review-bomb WARDOGS on Steam, and says some of them told the team as much when their cash was taken. Banned players can still leave reviews, so the studio is asking everyone else to write one, positive or negative. It points out that WARDOGS has about 150,000 Steam reviews against nearly 4 million players. Bulkhead says it is not asking for positive reviews in particular.
Banned and think it is a mistake?
The ban screen shows error code 1147405307, with a Reason and a Time Left. Appeals go through the WARDOGS Support bot on the official Discord. Bulkhead has not said how it will handle appeals from this wave. How to read the ban screen and appeal → · What else gets you banned → · Everything else in the Season 3 devlog →