Half a Million Players Tried Wardogs During Its Closed Beta — Outpacing Milsim Veterans

The week’s biggest gaming headlines belonged to Call of Duty and Battlefield. Wardogs didn’t care. British studio Bulkhead ran a closed beta for its 100-player tactical FPS last weekend — the same window that saw a Modern Warfare 4 beta and a major Battlefield 6 update — and walked away with numbers that surprised everyone, including the developers themselves. “The reaction from the FPS community has been insane,” said game director Howard Philpott, “with nearly half a million unique players showing up to play the closed beta the same week as Call of Duty’s beta and Battlefield 6’s massive update.”

Numbers That Put Milsim Veterans to Shame

According to Philpott’s post-beta debrief video, Wardogs attracted nearly 500,000 total unique players over the closed beta weekend, with peak concurrent Steam players climbing above 100,000 on Sunday. That figure is, by some distance, the highest peak concurrent player count any milsim-adjacent FPS has recorded on PC — more than Squad, Hell Let Loose, or Arma has ever reached in the genre. Wardogs also made a visible impact on Twitch, pulling close to 200,000 concurrent viewers at its peak. The Modern Warfare 4 beta drew higher figures, peaking around 271,000 viewers, but for an indie gaming studio going head-to-head with Activision on the same weekend, the numbers tell a genuinely compelling story. Prior to the beta, Wardogs had accumulated more than 800,000 Steam wishlists. The server queues that greeted players at launch — reportedly exceeding 49,000 at one point — suggest those wishlists translated into real intent, not just wishful clicking.

What Wardogs Actually Is

Wardogs is a 100-player military simulation FPS developed by Bulkhead, a Derby-based British studio. Three opposing factions compete over objectives across large maps, using a “hot zone” cash economy where players earn in-match currency by holding territory and spend it on resupply, vehicles, and reinforcements. The early access build ships with 37 weapons, 27 vehicles, and three maps at launch, with a fourth already in development. Bulkhead’s design sits somewhere between the accessibility of Battlefield and the methodical teamplay of Squad — demanding enough to reward coordination, but not so opaque as to alienate new players. Publisher Team17 is backing the title, lending Bulkhead distribution muscle without imposing the monetisation strategies that have drawn criticism elsewhere in the shooter market.

Going Toe-to-Toe With Call of Duty

The timing of Wardogs’ closed beta was either audacious or tactically brilliant, depending on your perspective. Bulkhead scheduled it alongside one of the year’s most anticipated shooter launches, running from 21 to 23 August — exactly when the Modern Warfare 4 beta was pulling in its own enormous numbers. On Steam, Modern Warfare 4’s beta peaked at approximately 115,000 concurrent players. Wardogs hit 92,000 simultaneously. That’s not a win on raw numbers, but for a $40 indie FPS competing directly against Call of Duty on the same weekend, it represents one of the genre’s more remarkable beta performances in recent memory.

Early Access Arrives on 10 September

Wardogs enters Steam early access on 10 September 2026 at $39.99 — a price that will step up to $49.99 as development progresses, and eventually $59.99 at full release. The studio is targeting 12 to 24 months of early access before a full launch, using that window to expand the content roster and refine systems based on community feedback. Given how the beta landed, the community appears ready to show up for the long haul.