The Wardogs developers said "We were wrong" and ended Season 2's team-specific cash and experience points bonus experiment after a single tumultuous day.

Background: a faction reputation experiment at Season 2 launch

Wardogs is a multiplayer sandbox FPS currently in early access. Season 2 arrived with an unusual social experiment aimed at Lonestar, the infamous faction also known as Blue Team. Bulkhead, the developer, began granting bonus XP and cash only to Blue players. The game is upgrade-focused, so cash is its lifeblood. Bulkhead's hypothesis was that more skilled players would give Lonestar a chance, helping boost its dismal winrates and perhaps improve its tarnished image.

The incentives were small: 5% to cash and 2.5% to XP. Bulkhead's expectation was that the bonuses were "not, for the median player, substantial enough to actually matter." The source material credits Team17 for the image.

Development: one day later, the experiment was cancelled

One day into the change, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer announced the immediate cancellation of the bonus scheme in a video. "We were wrong. We fucked up," he said.

The promise of free money and experience did create a wave of Blue Team picks, but some players, described by Brammer as "tryhards," earned far more than Bulkhead anticipated. Wardogs' top players took home thousands upon thousands of war dollars in bonuses alone, potentially upsetting the shooter's progression balance.

The rush to Lonestar also created match-start problems. Players reportedly left servers once the Blue crew filled up, then tried to join the faction elsewhere. The red and green teams could not always attract enough players, so matches were delayed until all three teams were sufficiently manned.

Latest progress: hotfix removes bonuses, map changes stay

Bulkhead hotfixed the XP bonus out of existence. The episode left a few thousand players with freshly swollen pockets, and the report suggested likely zero people switched to the belief that Blue Team is filled with scholars and gentlemen.

More conventional rebalancing appears to have done more. The video said moving spawn locations on the Bakuriani map has been more effective and is improving the troubled faction's win percentages. Those changes will stay.

Bulkhead's next target is a widely used vehicle XP exploit. The source notes that the writer had not personally seen the exploit in action, but describes it as repeatedly driving in and out of a faction HQ to rapidly amass minor experience rewards. Season 2's more generous XP payouts for logistical feats, among which safe "round trips" are counted, helped perpetrators prematurely unlock late-game vehicles like tanks. The temporary fix in place for now slows vehicle progression rates to their Season 1 levels.

Current stage for players

As of the cancellation, the Blue Team bonus experiment is over. The 5% cash and 2.5% XP bonuses were removed, the Bakuriani spawn changes remain, and vehicle progression has been pulled back to Season 1 rates. For players, the one-day episode shows how even modest rewards in a progression-heavy multiplayer game can shape faction choice, server flow, and the pace at which late-game equipment is reached.