Command Squad WARDOGS servers

WARDOGS is a large-scale tactical shooter from BULKHEAD, published by Team17. Per the publisher's own announcement, it enters Steam Early Access on September 10, 2026 at $39.99, and its defining features are:

• 100 players across 3 teams — not two. A third faction changes every fight you have ever had in a two-team shooter.
• A randomised Control Zone roughly 2 × 2 km, placed inside a much larger map. Holding it with more players than the other two teams is how you score.
• Combined arms. Ground vehicles and aircraft alongside infantry.
• Destructible environments and player building. Cover is temporary, and you can make your own.
• A persistent cash economy. Progression carries between matches, and what you can field is an economic decision rather than an unlock grind.
• Community servers at launch, rented through hosting partners the developer has approved. Ours are two of them.

We have deliberately kept this list short. Everything above comes from Team17 and BULKHEAD material; the detailed mechanics guides on this site will be written once we have played the live build on our own servers, not before.

Early Access starts on September 10, 2026. As of September 8, 2026, these are open questions we will answer on this page rather than guess at:

• Whether WARDOGS supports a direct connect or launch URL we can put behind a button.
• Exact server-side settings and admin tooling available to community hosts at launch.
• How the cash economy balances in a full 100-player public match.
• Which of our Squad-derived expectations actually make sense in a three-team game.

We would rather publish four pages that are right than twenty that are recycled from a press kit. As we learn the answers, they land in the WARDOGS Field Manual and in dated Intel posts.

A brand-new game is full of servers that appear in launch week and are gone by October. Here is what we are actually bringing to it:

• An admin team that already exists. Our staff have been administrating Squad servers for years — rota coverage, ticket handling, appeals, ban list integration. None of that has to be invented this week.
• We have expanded before. We added a Galactic Contention server and kept it to the same standard rather than letting it drift into an unmoderated second server.
• Rules written for behaviour, not mechanics. Our WARDOGS launch rules are deliberately conservative: conduct, cheating, ghosting, griefing, teamwork. We are not going to invent vehicle-claim rules for a game nobody has played publicly yet.
• Members who asked for it. This came from our own community wanting somewhere to play WARDOGS together, not from a growth plan.

These are things we control, so we can promise them on day one — unlike anything about the game's balance:

• Admins actually in the server. Not a roster page. In matches, acting on what they see, reachable through Discord (external link).
• Teamwork encouraged, not roleplayed. Use comms, play the Control Zone, help your team. Nobody is going to make you salute.
• Clear launch rules. Published before the servers open, with a visible version and change log rather than quiet edits.
• New players welcome — everyone is new. On day one there are no veterans. Say you're learning and you will get help.
• Moderation we can sustain. We would rather run two servers well than six badly.

You will find the community identical and the game genuinely different. Three teams instead of two, a cash economy instead of role kits, and a Control Zone that moves. Our Squad-player transition guide is being written from live play rather than speculation — it lands in the WARDOGS Field Manual in launch week. In the meantime, the beginner guide covers what we know now.