Wardogs , the highly anticipated military shooter from British development studio Bulkhead, hit impressive results on PC yesterday, but also suffered from technical issues. The multiplayer game designed for 100 players hit a peak of more than 300,000 concurrent active players within hours of launching in Steam Early Access. This huge craze immediately pushed the game to the top of the global Steam sales chart, but also caused the login server and matchmaking system to crash. The development team was forced to temporarily shut down the server completely to make significant capacity adjustments.
The bumpy start came as a surprise to many participants, as Bulkhead conducted several closed betas in advance to specifically prepare its network infrastructure for stressful situations. However, actual interest when sales began exceeded all of the studio’s predictions.
Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer pointed out in a statement that the queuing and connection issues were caused by server-side rate limits in Valve’s interface, among other reasons, because independent studios were unable to rely on the server prioritization of established AAA publishers from the beginning. After intense maintenance work and coordination with the operator’s platform, technicians gradually brought the server back online within a day.
Currently, user feedback is correspondingly lackluster, with only 66% of players giving the game positive reviews on Steam. However, since server issues are often criticized and the gameplay is well received, user reviews should improve quickly as long as the servers are running stably.
Despite initial disconnections and login errors, first sales and player numbers highlighted the game’s huge potential. The combination of complex tactical mechanics, large-scale combat, and active community involvement have made Wardogs one of the most popular tactical shooters in recent years. The game sold over 1 million copies within 24 hours of release.
For Bulkhead, the focus in the coming weeks will be on permanently stabilizing the game environment to cope with ongoing server spikes, and on orderly executing plans for further content updates during Early Access.
