WARDOGS just got its first real season. BULKHEAD and publisher Team17 have released Season 2 on Steam, the first major Early Access update since the 100-player tactical FPS launched last month, according to a Games Press release and the Steam patch notes.
The game has already surpassed three million copies sold and recorded a peak of more than 425,000 concurrent players. RCG covered the explosive open when it moved 1.25 million copies in its first 24 hours.
New toys, worse weather
Season 2 adds heavy rain and thunderstorms that change visibility and sound. Thunder can mask footsteps, which BULKHEAD says opens flanking and coordinated pushes. The update also brings four weapons, four vehicles and three buildables, including the T-72B3 main battle tank and Flakpanzer Gepard anti-air vehicle, plus an experimental Wager Vendor for staking in-game cash on your own performance.
Balance under the hood
CEO Joe Brammer said the patch is as much about systems as content. After a month of watching millions of players, the studio has changed combat balance, progression, teamplay and faction dynamics. One unusual lever: cash and XP incentives to pull players onto Lonestar, the underperforming blue faction, as BULKHEAD keeps experimenting with three-faction warfare.
“Players have already found ways to play WARDOGS that we never expected, and they’ve certainly not been shy about telling us what needs improving,” Brammer said. “Season 2 is about taking everything we’ve learned over the past month and putting it into action.”
The Season 2 launch also followed BULKHEAD’s reveal of the winning entry in its community clip contest, which awarded one player $100,000 for a gameplay video and gave additional in-game currency prizes to other finalists. That promotion is separate from the patch itself but underscores how large the Early Access audience has become in a single month.
Season 2 is live on Steam now, with more Early Access updates planned as BULKHEAD keeps building in public.
