WARDOGS Beta Is Over: Player Numbers, Progress Wipe and Launch Day

The WARDOGS beta closed at 08:00 UTC on Sunday 6 September, the time Bulkhead set when it threw the doors open on the Friday night. Early Access is on Steam on 10 September 2026. Between those two dates there are no servers to play on, so this is the moment to sort out what the two betas actually told us, and what the studio has and has not said about launch.

When did the WARDOGS beta end, and is there another one?

The second closed beta started live on air at The FPS Games Show on 3 September, went to pre-order holders in waves, and became an open beta on 5 September with Bulkhead's three-line Steam post: “THE CLOSED BETA IS NOW AN OPEN BETA! Come break our servers. Until the Beta ends, Sunday at 08:00 UTC.” That Sunday was 6 September. No further test has been announced, and with launch four days later there is no room for one. The next time anyone plays WARDOGS is Early Access.

How big the betas got, in Bulkhead's own numbers

The studio published its first beta's figures itself, in the recap video it posted on 24 August. The second beta's peak is SteamDB's reading of the WARDOGS Playtest app. Both sets are below, and the growth between them is the story.

Bulkhead called the first weekend's turnout “insane”: “nearly half a million unique players” in the same week as Call of Duty's beta and a Battlefield update, the number one game on Twitch two nights running, and “over 100,000 concurrent players at our peak on the final day.” Two weeks later the second beta more than doubled that peak. SteamDB recorded 212,247 concurrent players on 4 September, before the test was even open to everyone, and an all-time high of 245,118 on the 5th. For a playtest of an unreleased $39.99 game with no free-to-play hook, that is a launch-sized audience showing up for a rehearsal.

What Bulkhead said went wrong

The recap is unusually frank for a studio video, and worth quoting because it sets the bar for launch. “We saw around 4% of players refund the game because they felt it just wasn't for them, which is totally valid and the reason we ran the test in the first place.” Then the part they were not fine with: “an additional 3% of players experienced crashes at launch or during gameplay,” which they called “just not acceptable” against the stability of their own closed alpha.

The first hour was the worst of it. A Twitch Drops and DLC entitlement check “pinging a node on our back end” left “thousands of players” in a queue, with a dev on camera reading out 50,000 waiting sixteen minutes in. The fix was to switch Drops and DLC off, which they called “a small price to pay to get everyone in game.” Launch crashes and voice chat were named the number one priority before the next test.

That is also why the second beta looked the way it did. Its 1 September announcement listed exactly those systems as the things being tested: “server scaling and browsing, Twitch Drops, DLC entitlements, VOIP and our login queue.” Nothing on that list is a gun or a map. The second beta was the first one's bug list, run at twice the scale, and the fact that it ended by opening the doors to everyone suggests the waves held.

The announcement that landed badly, and the apology

The “HUGE announcement” Bulkhead promised for The FPS Games Show turned out to be a $100,000 clip contest, and the reaction was sharp enough that the studio posted a second video the next day titled “Addressing the Announcement”. It opens with “we screwed up and we overhyped our announcement,” and explains that the original plan had been to shadow-drop the beta at the show.

Two facts from that video matter more than the apology. The prize money “is actually just coming out of our marketing budget,” which they put at $300,000 in total, and “we haven't paid any influencers.” The contest is open to anyone who plays and posts a clip; the top 100 a month after launch each win $100,000 in game cash and the single best wins $100,000 in real money. Whatever you make of the marketing, the studio's pattern is consistent: it keeps telling people to watch players rather than trailers before buying, and it spent the trailer money on players.

Does beta progress carry over to Early Access?

Bulkhead has not said. Nothing in its Steam announcements, its Early Access notes on the store page or either video mentions cash, XP or unlocks surviving into launch. Players report that progress was wiped between the closed alpha and the first beta, and every other test-to-launch transition in the genre wipes. Until the studio says otherwise, plan on starting Early Access with the $10,000 everyone starts with and nothing else.

If that is the case, the betas still did their job for you: you know which guns you like and roughly what they cost. Our own read on how to spend that first $10,000 is in the cost-per-life piece, and the short version is a pistol, a T-21 at $600 or the free faction rifle, a sight you can zero, and patience before the FAL at $6,500.

Early Access on 10 September: date, price and what is in it

Early Access is 10 September 2026 on Steam, Windows only, at $39.99, with a $49.99 Supporter Edition that adds cosmetics. Bulkhead's own Early Access notes on the store page say the game will stay in Early Access for “around 1 to 2 years,” that the price is deliberately lower now and “will increase as content expands toward full release,” and that the full version will add maps, weapons and vehicles, including fighter jets, deeper progression and “seasonal meta gameplay.”

What ships on day one is what the betas ran: 100 players on three teams, the Control Zone mode, the cash economy, vehicles, logistics and proximity voice. Bulkhead has said 37 weapons for launch against the 35 recorded across the tests, so two are still unseen. The playtest build was a 42 GB download according to SteamDB's depot record; budget for something similar and preload if Steam offers it.

What changes on this site on launch day

Nothing here calls anything a launch figure yet. Every price and stat on our weapon pages is a closed-test reading, and the tier list labels itself Pre-launch, Closed Beta 1 to Closed Beta 2 because that is what its 5 sources played. When the live vendor opens and the sources re-check their numbers, our pages refresh from them, and any weapon the databases add gets a page. This article will not change: it is the record of where things stood the week the beta closed.

Quick answers

When did the WARDOGS beta end? Sunday 6 September 2026 at 08:00 UTC, per Bulkhead's Steam post.

When is WARDOGS out? Early Access on Steam on 10 September 2026, $39.99, Windows only.

Does beta progress carry over? Bulkhead has not said. Assume a wipe.

How many people played? Bulkhead reported nearly half a million unique players in the first beta; SteamDB recorded a 245,118 concurrent peak in the second.

Community-recorded from Closed Alpha and Closed Beta vendor screens, cross-checked across independent databases. Bulkhead publishes no official weapon figures, and Early Access can retune any of them. Tier placements are read live from our own list, which is built from 5 attributed published rankings rather than from telemetry, so they move as that list does. Statistical data is based on external APIs and publicly available information. It may differ from official data.