Gamers crashed Wardogs servers on the very first day of early access – developers partially blame Valve

Wardogs, a 100-player milsim FPS, launched in Steam early access and instantly became a hit. The game topped Steam's global sales chart, and its player count blew past 300,000 concurrent users right away. Not everyone managed to get into a match, though.

Servers buckled under the flood of players, and login queues stretched on so long that developer Bulkhead pulled servers offline entirely to fix the problem. The studio confirmed this on the official Wardogs account on X.

We are actively working towards getting as many of you in game as soon as possible. Apologies for the disruption. This is due to an issue that wasn't present in the previous beta.

Trying to log in currently serves up an error. In a separate video, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer explained that the delays are partly tied to restrictions on Valve's end.

Ideally we'd be on a triple-A tier for some of this stuff, but we're not. So we're talking to them, trying to get that sorted out. It is what it is. I wouldn't leave the queue, I'd just stay in.

The launch troubles aren't a huge surprise given the hype around the game, but they still disappointed players. Many expected a smooth start since Bulkhead ran several closed betas before release. The studio itself seemed confident in its server infrastructure – the final closed test took place just last weekend, with developers openly inviting players to "obliterate our servers."