WARDOGS Early Access Launch Hit by Major Server Problems

WARDOGS is an all-out warfare tactical shooter where 100 players split into three teams fight over a control zone. The action takes place on a destructible industrial landscape in Eastern Europe. The game is available on PC via Steam only, with console versions planned for 2028.

Launch went live on September 10 at 16:00 UTC. Two closed betas preceded release — August 21–23, and a stress test from September 3–6 that was later opened up to a wider audience.

WARDOGS hit a peak of 337,157 concurrent players on launch day, according to SteamCharts — an extraordinary number for an indie studio. The game immediately climbed to the top of Steam's best-seller charts.

This sudden surge in popularity reminded me of when ARC Raiders was released. Back then, no one expected the game from Embark Studios to become so popular. In just 10 days, the peak number of online players reached 481,966.

The scale of the influx caught even the development team off guard. Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer acknowledged the issue publicly on X (Twitter), stating that 135,000 players had already made it through the queue, being let in "in waves," and admitting the studio had to "take the L" on the rollout.

Among the main player complaints: queue times ranging from 40 minutes to several hours, crashes after long waits that forced players back to the end of the queue.

For comfortable 60 FPS gameplay in WARDOGS, players will need a 64-bit processor and operating system, running Windows 10 as a minimum. On the hardware side, the recommended baseline includes an Intel Core i5 8600 or AMD Ryzen 5 3500 processor, paired with 16 GB of RAM. A dedicated GPU such as the Nvidia GTX 1660 or Radeon RX 590 is required to hit stable frame rates. Players should also have a broadband internet connection and at least 50 GB of free storage space. It's worth noting that these specs target 1080p on Low settings at 60 FPS using upscaling, so those aiming for higher visual fidelity or native resolution may need stronger hardware.