It’s hard to believe that, even in 2026, there are still multiplayer games that subject players to the nightmare of queuing—and *Wardogs*, a large-scale battlefield shooter released today, has achieved the “feat” of having 330,000 players waiting in line online.
In fact, even before its official release, the game already showed signs of becoming a hit. During the closed beta alone, *War Dog* attracted nearly 250,000 players, and during the pre-order period, it quickly climbed to the top of Steam’s global best-seller list.According to an official announcement, *War Dog* sold 1.25 million copies on its first day of release. Based on a pre-order price of $40, the game generated nearly $50 million (approximately 335 million RMB) in revenue on its first day.
Interestingly, this “small studio” from Derby, England, has had a long-standing connection with Tencent.In 2020, Tencent spent a massive $1.3 billion to acquire Leyou Technologies and its subsidiary studio, Splash Damage. Then, in 2022, Splash Damage acquired Bulkhead, the developer of *War Dogs*. At the time, Tencent held an indirect stake in Bulkhead, and *War Dogs* was officially greenlit shortly thereafter.
However, the honeymoon period was short-lived. In September 2025, Tencent sold Splash Damage to the private equity firm Emona Capital. Although the Bulkhead project had been “recognized” by Tencent at the time and was spun off to remain within the company, such a small company could never satisfy the appetite of a corporate giant.Before long, Bulkhead’s management established a new holding company, SMG, and formed a consortium with Everplay and Hiro Capital to acquire Bulkhead in its entirety from Tencent, ultimately succeeding in “buying their freedom.”
Joe Brammer, founder and CEO of Bulkhead, later recalled: “In 2022, our first year of partnership with Tencent, it truly felt like a dream come true.They said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a lot of funding here—go create something, and then tell us what product you’ve built and who you want to sell it to.’ That was the period when we achieved the most.”
At the time, the production budget for *War Dogs* ranged from 10 to 12 million pounds, which was already a huge step forward for a small studio; however, Tencent hoped the studio would achieve even greater success.
In Joe Brammer’s view, the project Tencent had in mind was simply too large-scale for them. After all, they had previously started out as a team of just five people and had developed only three titles before *War Dog*,two puzzle games, *Pneuma: Breath of Life* and *The Turing Test*, and their best-selling shooter, *Battalion 1944*, which had sold only 580,000 copies—yet Tencent’s goal at the time was a blockbuster with a budget of 50 million pounds.
Joe Brammer explained: “Between 2021 and 2022, Tencent conveyed the following message to all UK developers: they would not consider any project with an investment cost below 50 million pounds.As a result, Tencent sometimes wondered why we invested so little in the *War Dog* project. Although we met all our objectives, the investment amounted to only 50 percent of what was originally planned—a product of this scale was clearly not what Tencent was looking for.”
In 2025, Tencent began deliberately divesting and reviewing its overseas investment assets. For Bulkhead, the issue may not have been that the product wasn’t good enough, but rather that its scale simply didn’t fit into Tencent’s strategic plans.Yet this passive “breakup” actually granted *War Dog* an unimaginable degree of freedom: the team did not publish a content update roadmap, did not include any in-app purchases, and focused solely on game optimization, balance adjustments, and bug fixes during the Early Access period—as well as addressing any issues raised by players after they started playing. True content updates would not begin until after the official 1.0 release.
Despite making a series of seemingly outlandish promises, *War Dogs* still managed to have its moment in the spotlight after its release.
01
A Trip Down Memory Lane with “PUBG”
I originally thought *War Dogs* would be a large-scale, territory-control game similar to the *Battlefield* series, but once I was matched into a game and saw a group of guys engaging in “free-for-all brawls” in the big square, I was instantly transported back to the heyday of *PUBG*—and that’s when I knew I’d come to the right place.
*War Dogs* features only one game mode, called “Territory Control.” Simply put, in the game, all players (with support for up to 100 players) are divided into three factions and randomly assigned to a map spanning 256 square kilometers. Each faction has an initial base where players can purchase various equipment and vehicles.
On this massive map, a fixed “control zone” measuring 2×2 kilometers will spawn randomly. The players’ objective is to have as many members as possible within this control zone. The faction with the most members in the zone will control the entire area and earn 1 point after a certain period of time. The first faction to reach 100 points wins the game.
Like most large-scale tactical games, vast, open maps often leave me feeling lost and unsure of where I am, who I am, and what I’m supposed to do. As a result, most of the combat in *War Dogs* takes place within control zones.Players must drive off-road vehicles or fly fighter jets to quickly enter these control zones and establish their own forward command posts at designated locations. Consequently, just like on a real battlefield, the game’s area is divided into two core zones: the front lines and the rear supply lines.
Some clever players may have already realized that, since you can earn points just by having a large group, you might as well just stay inside your house. That’s right—the development team clearly anticipated this “unconventional strategy,” so a randomly moving core zone will spawn within the controlled area. Any actions taken within the core zone will earn double the rewards.
And this brings us to another core mechanic of the game: money.
In *War Dogs*, currency is primarily used to purchase various gear and vehicles, but unlike most PvP shooters, the currency in *War Dogs* carries over between matches—somewhat similar to *Search, Fight, Retreat*—with the key difference being that gear purchases are made during the match.During a match, players receive rewards for any action they take. You can charge into battle and take out enemies, act as an Uber driver specializing in transporting players to the front lines, or even become a construction worker, building structures of all sizes anywhere on the map.
You can even tip your teammates for their help or bribe enemy players to save your own “skin.” As a result, the core objective of this PvP game has shifted from winning as a team to becoming wealthy on your own.
As I mentioned earlier, this game has no in-app purchases, but it still includes a variety of skins and items. The resource used to obtain these rare items is called “gold bars.”
There are only two ways to obtain gold bars: one is to purchase them directly with money, but exchange rates fluctuate significantly, so “invest with caution.” For example, when I first started playing the game, one bar cost only 200,000, but after finishing a match, the price skyrocketed to over 2.7 million.
Another approach is that, before each major update, the developers reset all player resources—similar to a season reset—and convert in-game currency directly into gold bars at a specific rate.
By now, you should have a pretty good idea of the game’s core gameplay. *War Dogs* doesn’t actually emphasize the distinction between individual and team play as much as other PvP games do. Any actions you take in the control zone serve not only to boost your own economic growth but also to reduce the number of enemy players, thereby contributing to your team’s success.
The developers shared a very interesting example: They recruited several players who had never played a shooter game before. These players didn’t enjoy direct combat—like “head-to-head sniping”—but instead grouped up and holed up in a building, with some acting as scouts, others covering the rear, and still others keeping watch.And even without engaging in direct combat, as long as they could stay alive within the control zone, they were still making a steady contribution to the team.
02
From War Dog to War God
Like *Battlefield*, *War Dogs* features numerous soldier classes, but these classes cannot be freely selected before entering the game; instead, players must perform various actions within the game to earn the corresponding experience.For example, killing enemies earns Assault experience, while rescuing players earns Medical experience. All experience is aggregated into a personal level, which unlocks corresponding items and firearms.It’s worth noting that these class levels and experience points are not reset with version updates but are permanently retained. This means that the more time players invest, the stronger they will become in the game.
Brammer describes it as a journey “from War Dog to God of War.” Therefore, at the heart of *War Dog* is a commitment to respecting players’ time and rewarding their dedication.
In terms of equipment complexity, *War Dog* falls somewhere between *Battlefield* and *Escape from Tarkov*—you don’t have to manually load rounds into magazines, but you still need to plan your resource allocation wisely based on your backpack’s capacity.Standard gear—including helmets, body armor, magazines, and backpacks—is all available, along with various items such as first-aid kits, ammo resupplies, binoculars, and vehicles, each of which contributes to experience growth for different roles, such as medic, support, scout, and driver.
The variety of firearms is currently limited; aside from the choice of ammunition, only magazines, sights, grips,muzzle—as customizable parts. Overall, it’s currently quite difficult to customize weapons, and most firearms and accessories must first be unlocked by reaching the corresponding class level, after which they can be unlocked in a single purchase with in-game currency. For players who are strapped for cash early on, equipping a full set of gear is like “delivering packages.”
Based on my personal experience, *War Dogs* does offer some fresh ideas in its large-scale battle gameplay, but overall, it doesn’t feel quite polished.
On the one hand, even though a combat zone has been designated in the center of the map, for a 100-player match, the experience mostly boils down to “10 minutes of running around and 5 seconds of actual combat.” I often find myself just trailing behind the main group, or when I’m on my own, getting hit by a sniper shot and panicking as I flee.
The duration of a single match has been extended to about 2 hours, but since the game’s score is determined by the number of players and the front lines are far from the rear, most of the gameplay experience is spent traveling between the two. The experience is quite good for players who team up, but for lone wolves, it’s practically no fun at all.
On the other hand, a single gameplay mode may limit the game’s long-term viability. This is especially true for multiplayer battle games that rely heavily on high DAU for matchmaking; once the initial surge of popularity subsides, the resulting sharp decline in player numbers leads to longer matchmaking times, creating a vicious cycle of dwindling player numbers.
In particular, the game next door, “The Final,” has already set a textbook-level “cautionary tale.” Add to that the invisible gear gap between new and veteran players, the server stability that players have already torn apart, and the cheaters who are already starting to pop up here and there—I can’t help but feel anxious about the future of *War Dog*.
However, there is one rather counterintuitive fact here: long before the game’s release, Bulkhead had already stated publicly—on more than one occasion—that “the hype would fade.”
On the day of release, Brammer responded on X to discussions about the sustainability of the game’s popularity, displaying a rare dose of “realism”: “War Dog will continue to lose players in the coming months as the hype fades.“This doesn’t mean it’s a bad game—it’s not even a problem; we originally planned for 5,000 concurrent users.”
This naturally makes one wonder: where will the long-term answer lie for *War Dogs*, a game with a single-mode structure?
Conclusion
At the Gamescom 2026 in Cologne, Mark Pinney, CFO and Senior Game Director at Bulkhead, and CEO Joe Brammer were interviewed. When asked if PvE content would be added in future updates, Brammer’s response exceeded expectations: ““We’ve already developed the entire gameplay system—you can even play it right now, though it’s still quite rough around the edges. In fact, our vision is that when you purchase Warhounds and own a Warhounds account, we’ll continue to release DLC over the next few years, and that’s what the new game modes will be.”
In fact, they’re not just considering PVE modes—loot-and-run gameplay is also on their radar. Brammer was quite cautious in his wording on this point: “I don’t want to call it a ‘loot-and-run’ type of gameplay. Let me give you a simple example: you can go out and scavenge for gear, then bring that gear into the core gameplay mode, ‘Territory Control.’”
Brammer concluded, “We’ll release other modes as DLC to continue funding the game, keep it growing, and ensure players continue to enjoy it.”
Putting the information from the above interviews together, it’s not hard to see Bulkhead’s long-term strategy: sustain the studio with a one-time-purchase game, spend one to two years in early access to polish it thoroughly, and then use subsequent DLCs to introduce new gameplay modes to cater to players who aren’t satisfied with a single mode.
This path is, of course, a difficult one to navigate. Since it doesn’t rely on high DAU, every new model requires convincing players all over again to keep spending; and since it rejects Tencent’s unimaginable budgets, there’s little room for trial and error.“An endless budget” was once seen as a kind of “original sin” for Bulkhead within Tencent’s system at the time, but after breaking away from Tencent, it has become the “freedom” that allows Bulkhead to thrive today.
原创文章，作者：gameteahouse，禁止转载：https://youxichaguan.com/en/archives/207964
