by Game of Review Team · published 2026-10-07 · updated 2026-10-18
WARDOGS
$39.99 · 72% positive on Steam · Our score: 7.3/10
WARDOGS price and system requirements Read our reviewWhat is WARDOGS, exactly?
WARDOGS is a tactical all-out-warfare FPS from BULKHEAD, the Derby-based studio behind it, published by Team17. The pitch is big: up to 100 players split across three rival teams, fighting over randomized 2x2km control zones on a destructible Eastern European battlefield. First team to 100 points wins the match.
- Infantry, vehicles, and base-building/destruction all in the same match
- A cash-based economy, so the gear and vehicles you bring in cost real in-match money, and dying actually sets you back
- Proximity and local team voice chat, plus kernel-level anti-cheat
- Three maps at launch, each with multiple layout variations
If you've bounced off Arma for being too sim-heavy or off Battlefield for being too arcadey, this is clearly aiming for the gap in between.
Why it's climbing the charts now
WARDOGS went into Steam Early Access on September 10, 2026, after racking up more than 800,000 wishlists and running a closed beta for pre-order customers beforehand. Nearly a month later, it's not just holding on, it's sitting in Steam's top sellers list alongside day-one blockbusters, which is the more interesting story than the launch itself. A game charting in its launch week is normal. A game still charting a month in usually means people are actually playing it and telling friends.
The review numbers back that up. WARDOGS currently sits at "Mostly Positive" across close to 70,000 user reviews, with roughly 79 percent of them positive. For an early-access military shooter built around destructible maps and a 100-player economy system, that's a genuinely strong hold rate, those games tend to get hammered early over performance and balance.
Should you jump in now?
It's still Early Access, and BULKHEAD has said outright that they're planning on spending one to two years in that phase before a 1.0 release, with pricing going up once it launches properly. The studio has also committed to no pay-to-win monetization, cosmetics only, which matters a lot for a shooter built around a cash economy.
WARDOGS is for players who want a large-scale tactical shooter with actual stakes attached to every death and every vehicle you bring into a match, and who are fine riding out an early-access roadmap to get there early.
Our take
WARDOGS holding a 79 percent positive score across roughly 70,000 reviews, a month after Early Access launch, is the real headline here, not the top-sellers placement. Military shooters with destructible maps and economy systems usually get torn apart early for performance and balance, so this is a sign BULKHEAD shipped something that mostly works. The bigger question is whether a cosmetics-only, one-to-two-year Early Access plan can keep a 100-player community fed with content without the usual mid-cycle player drop-off. Worth watching how it holds up once the launch-week wishlist crowd thins out.
Sources
WARDOGS
$39.99 · 72% positive on Steam · Our score: 7.3/10
WARDOGS price and system requirements Read our review