Wardogs Dev Admits "We F***ed Up" After Rocky Season 2 Launch

Bulkhead, the developer of Wardogs, has owned up to a messy Season 2 launch. XP and cash bonuses meant to draw players to the unpopular Blue Team ended up making it the dominant side in nearly every match, and the studio has already removed the boosts in a hotfix. CEO Joe Brammer was blunt about it: "We were wrong, we f***ed up."

An experiment that backfired

Season 2 added the bonuses to improve the reputation of Lonestar, the faction on Blue Team. The numbers were small: 5% extra cash and 2.5% extra XP. That was still enough to attract the most competitive players in the game.

Experienced players moved to Blue and boosted their accounts quickly. Normally it takes a while to unlock the strongest gear, but the bonuses had Blue Team players kitted out in the best armor and the most irritating weapons in short order. Blue went from the worst performing team to winning match after match.

Brammer said the change was never meant to be permanent. "This was an experiment," he said, adding that the team expected to keep it in for about a week.

Spawns were the real issue

Brammer also pushed back on criticism that Bulkhead ignored the underlying problems with Blue Team, namely spawn placement. "The only comment that annoyed me is when people say, 'They didn't address the core issues [with Blue Team],'" he said. According to Brammer, the studio rebalanced the entire spawn setup for the Bakurani map and tested it extensively, and the results showed the difference had evened out.

In hindsight, he said, the bonuses were unnecessary. "We should have just stuck to our guns with that, really, but here we are," Brammer said. "We tried, it didn't work, this is us holding our hands up."

Early Access growing pains

Wardogs is still in Early Access, so swings like this are part of the process as Bulkhead looks for the right balance ahead of the 1.0 release. The game sold far beyond expectations, and the developers have been scrambling to keep pace with its popularity since.

Consoles add another layer of work. Wardogs will arrive on them with 1.0, and Bulkhead has previously admitted it had to hold back certain features to make sure the game runs on Xbox Series S.

Rain changes how matches play

Season 2 also introduced a new rain system that affects moment-to-moment play. Players have to listen closely to pick up footsteps, and visibility for pilots is drastically reduced.