Compare Revisions

11 WARDOGS is an online multiplayer game with no offline or single-player mode, so every match runs on a hosted server. Players find a game through a server browser rather than automated skill-based matchmaking, which makes the choice of server, and of who runs it, part of how a session plays out.
22  
33 Official and Community-Hosted Servers
44  
55 Two kinds of server sit behind that browser. Official servers are run by the developers. Alongside them, players can rent and run community-hosted servers, which opened for pre-order ahead of the early access launch on 10 September 2026 through three hosting companies the studio has approved for the purpose.
66  
77 The practical difference between the two is moderation. A community-hosted server has admins who can ban a bad actor on the spot, while an official server leans on the in-game reporting pipeline and the automated anti-cheat behind it. The developers point to community-hosted servers as the strongest protection a player can pick for exactly that reason.
88  
9+The Community Server Overhaul
10+ 
11+The community server layer did not survive contact with a live player base, and the studio said so itself two days after launch. Announcing patch 0.11 on 12 September 2026, it wrote that community servers had been underserved, that the browser experience as a whole had been poor, and that it had not put the same care and passion into community hosting as into the rest of the game, describing its own community server strategy as rushed. It called community servers the lifeblood of games like this one, the thing that keeps a game alive well past its peak, and said it had worked through the night on a fix.
12+ 
13+The update split the front end into two separate browsers, Community and Official. The studio's own reasoning was that a game at this player count would realistically use matchmaking rather than a browser, but that it did not want community admins and hosts to suffer for that.
14+ 
15+ChangeEffectSplit browsersCommunity and Official servers are listed separatelyFiltering removed from OfficialThere are no official modified game modes for a filter to sortFiltering improved on CommunityReliability fixes, plus a new text based searchPersistent server IDsIDs were previously wiped on map change and restart. Each server now keeps a unique ID that players can join by, longer than before for security reasonsEmpty and full toggleAdded to the browser quick barHost button repointedNow links straight to the hosting pageServer name rulesNames sort alphabetically regardless of special characters and numbers, and more than one consecutive space is disallowed
16+The studio attached a bonus of 5 percent end of match cash to community servers for the following week as an apology, and recommended them to players who wanted to earn quickly. It also named further community features as in the pipeline but not ready, tracked under Early Access Roadmap.
17+ 
18+Regions
19+ 
20+Capacity is managed by region. Server capacity in the Asian region was increased in the same patch, with the studio saying demand from the region warranted it and that it would put more focus into supporting Asia as part of the worldwide player base.
21+ 
22+Linux and Proton
23+ 
24+Linux is not officially supported. The studio set its position out in a pinned notice on 4 September 2026, six days before launch: it does not officially support Linux, could not commit to support at launch, and is still working on official Proton compatibility. It stated that this stance had not changed since pre-release, and attributed the confusion to a communications error by a community manager that was screenshotted and circulated.
25+ 
26+It also addressed the reason Linux players believed otherwise. Where the game ran under Proton during earlier alpha and beta rounds, the studio described that as happenstance rather than support, and advised anyone who had bought expecting Linux compatibility to refund. It said demand had been heard and that official compatibility remains the goal.
27+ 
928 Anti-Cheat
1029  
11-The store listing declares that the game uses kernel-level anti-cheat. As of 11 September 2026 the listing names Elytra as the provider. The studio addressed the subject head-on in a developer video published on 8 September 2026, opening with the observation that there is an unwritten rule in game development against talking about anti-cheat at all, and framing the video as an eleventh entry in its running list of reasons not to buy the game.
30+The store listing declares that the game uses kernel-level anti-cheat, and requires agreement to a third-party licence for it. As of 15 September 2026 the listing names Elytra as the provider. No first-party statement names any anti-cheat product: the studio addressed the subject directly in a developer video published on 8 September 2026, titled around the first rule of anti-cheat, and named none. Stored captures of the same listing block from July and August 2026 read a different provider, but the studio has never described a change, so this page records what the listing declares and when rather than asserting a switch.
1231  
1332 Its published advice to players has two parts. Use the in-game report function when playing on official servers, and move to a community-hosted server when the strongest protection matters, because an admin there does not have to wait for an automated system to act.
1433  
1534 Reporting and Bans
1635  
1736 The launch build reworked how reports are handled. The studio added a report tracking system and started weighting reports so that repeat and bad faith reporters carry less influence, which limits how much a coordinated group can do by mass-reporting a player. Cheater bans are now announced inside the server when match termination is turned off, so the rest of the lobby can see that an account was removed rather than guessing. The message telling a player they were kicked from a server now appears only when they were actually banned, instead of after any disconnect.
1837  
38+Enforcement did not go cleanly at launch. A wave of accounts were banned incorrectly on 10 and 11 September 2026; the studio pinned a running notice acknowledging the reports, said it was working through them, and later confirmed that a batch of bans had been rescinded.
39+ 
40+It has since published where the lines are. Patch 0.11 set out a three-tier response to economy abuse: a timed ban plus a reset of cash and experience to zero for abusing cash exploits, a permanent ban for producing content that teaches others to abuse a system without reporting it, which the studio said it treats as advertising cheats, and a permanent ban for experience farming, which it called the most serious category and said it detects by tracking which servers an account joins. It drew the line at repetition rather than discovery, describing one or two tests of a newly found bug as helping with quality assurance.
41+ 
1942 Systems Tested at Scale
2043  
2144 The second closed beta, announced on 1 September 2026, was run as a deliberate scale test rather than a marketing beat. The developers said they wanted players to jump in and break the systems that only fail under load, and set out which parts of the service they were watching.
2245  
2346 Area under testWhat it coversServer scalingCapacity as invited players were added in waves rather than all at onceServer browsingThe browser players use to find and join a matchTwitch DropsReward entitlements granted for watching live broadcasts of the gameContent entitlementsUnlocks tied to the optional Supporter EditionVoice chatThe proximity voice system used in every match, covered under Teams and TacticsLogin queueThe queue that holds players before they enter a server
2447 Regions and Capacity Planning
2548  
2649 Server capacity has shaped how the game was tested. During the closed alpha in August 2026 the developers ran servers across eight regions for the whole weekend window. Capacity planning is also the stated reason pre-orders carried a guaranteed beta invite instead of the studio simply running an open beta: a predictable number of testers made launch-day server requirements far easier to forecast.
2750  
2851 That caution eased at the end. The second beta was thrown open to everyone on 5 September 2026, with the developers inviting players to come and break the servers, and it ran until 08:00 UTC on Sunday 6 September. The full testing programme is covered under Playtests, and the hardware side of the client sits under System Requirements.
2952  
3053 Launch Day Stability
3154  
3255 The early access launch on 10 September 2026 put more players on the service than it could hold. Players could not join servers, were kicked out of matches while playing, and sat in long login queues. The studio released a client-side stability hotfix the same day and set out how it would land: every logged-in player was forced to close the game and download the update, everyone returned to the login queue on relaunch, and players were then let back in controlled batches that were widened as servers filled and held. The studio said it would keep monitoring through the night and apologised for the disruption.
3356  
3457 The server browser and front end were reworked in the same update. Browser filtering was rebuilt, community server images stopped scaling incorrectly in the listings, and the button for hosting a server now links straight to the hosting page.