A new military shooter is pulling numbers normally associated with much larger franchises. BULKHEAD says nearly 500,000 players participated in WARDOGS' August 21–23 closed beta, with game director Howard Philpott calling the reaction from the FPS community "insane" in a post-beta debrief (PC Gamer). SteamDB recorded a peak of 105,774 concurrent players in the separate WARDOGS Playtest app on August 23, up from roughly 92,595 on the beta's opening day (Niche Gamer). Philpott himself specifically highlighted that the turnout came during the same week as the Modern Warfare 4 beta and a major Battlefield 6 update.
The interest didn't appear overnight. BULKHEAD's official Steam news feed announced WARDOGS had passed one million wishlists on August 14, six months after the game's reveal (Steam Community). It enters Steam Early Access on September 10, 2026, at $39.99. But this shouldn't be framed as "WARDOGS is killing Call of Duty" — the two games aren't trying to do the same thing. The more interesting question is whether WARDOGS shows that a real chunk of the FPS audience wants something Call of Duty doesn't offer: huge battles, persistent stakes, slower tactical decisions, and destruction, without becoming another extraction shooter.
