[Skip to content](#main) [SHOOTERATLAS](/) - [Player counts](/#counts) - [Games](/#games) - [Guides](/#guides) - [Method](/#method) 20 readings · individual UTC times Menu - [Player counts](/#counts) - [Games](/#games) - [Guides](/#guides) - [Method](/#method) - [Home](/) 01 / Reference # WARDOGS release date: 10 September 2026, 16:00 UTC WARDOGS went on sale in Steam Early Access on **10 September 2026 at 16:00 UTC**, on Windows. The hour is the studio's own wording rather than ours: the launch trailer it publishes on its own site carries the line “Global Early Access Release TODAY | 16:00 UTC / 12:00 EDT” ([wardogs.com](https://wardogs.com/), read 30 September 2026). Valve's listing prints the day and nothing finer — “Sep 10, 2026” ([Steam appdetails API](https://store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails?appids=1867240&cc=us&l=english), read 30 September 2026). Because Steam unlocks on one global timestamp rather than a rolling midnight, 16:00 UTC lands on the evening of the 10th for Europe and after midnight on the 11th for Japan and Australia. What the date does not settle is the full-release date, the price at 1.0, and which consoles. 10 Sep 2026 Early Access, Windows official 16 : 00 UTC the hour it unlocked official 3 million copies sold by 26 September official 2028 consoles, year only official ## The hour, in your own clock One global unlock time means one moment everywhere, which is why launch-day threads get this wrong. The anchor is the studio's 16:00 UTC; every figure below is our arithmetic on that anchor and is not a set of times the studio published. 16:00 UTC on 10 September 2026, converted. All of it is our arithmetic on the studio's own unlock hour; the studio has published only “16:00 UTC / 12:00 EDT” ([wardogs.com](https://wardogs.com/), read 30 September 2026). | Region | Local time | Date | | --- | --- | --- | | US Pacific (PDT) | 09:00 | 10 September | | Mexico City | 10:00 | 10 September | | US Central (CDT) | 11:00 | 10 September | | US Eastern (EDT) | 12:00 | 10 September | | Brazil (Brasília) | 13:00 | 10 September | | UTC | 16:00 | 10 September | | UK, Portugal | 17:00 | 10 September | | Central Europe (CEST) | 18:00 | 10 September | | Eastern Europe, Türkiye, Moscow | 19:00 | 10 September | | Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia | 23:00 | 10 September | | China | 00:00 | 11 September | | Korea, Japan | 01:00 | 11 September | | Eastern Australia (AEST) | 02:00 | 11 September | | New Zealand (NZST) | 04:00 | 11 September | The single sourced value in that table is the first column of the legend, 16:00 UTC, taken from the studio's own trailer copy on [wardogs.com](https://wardogs.com/); the second published value, 12:00 EDT, is the US Eastern row. Every other row is our addition or subtraction, read back on 30 September 2026, and should be treated as arithmetic rather than as a published schedule. ## What the release date was, in the studio's own sequence WARDOGS is a Windows game, sold through Steam, and its store data says so plainly: release date “Sep 10, 2026”, developer BULKHEAD, publisher Team17, no console platform listed, priced at $39.99 with a 0% discount ([Steam appdetails API](https://store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails?appids=1867240&cc=us&l=english), read 30 September 2026). The steps that led to that day are all dated, and every one of them is in the studio's own announcement feed: The run-up to 10 September 2026, from the studio's own Steam announcements ([announcement feed](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/announcements/), read 30 September 2026). | Date | What the studio posted | | --- | --- | | 14 Aug 2026 | “1 MILLION WISHLISTS ON STEAM” — six months after the game was revealed. | | 1 Sep 2026 | Closed Beta 02 announced, tied to The FPS Games Show on 3 September, 18:00 UTC. The post explains why it stayed closed: invitees were added “in waves rather than opening the beta completely”, to exercise the parts that “only break at scale”, the login queue among them. | | 5 Sep 2026 | The closed beta became an open one: “Come break our servers”, until Sunday 08:00 UTC. | | 6 Sep 2026 | The test closed at 08:00 UTC. | | 9 Sep 2026 | Pre-load live, alongside the Season 1 changelog — the build anyone arriving on the 10th inherited. | | 10 Sep 2026 | Early Access opened at 16:00 UTC. A client hotfix followed the same day. | Every date in that table, and both quoted phrases, come from the [official Steam announcement feed](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/announcements/), read 30 September 2026; the 16:00 UTC row is the studio's trailer copy on [wardogs.com](https://wardogs.com/), read the same day. The four-day reversal — a closed test defended on 1 September, opened on the 5th — is in those two posts and nowhere else. ![Timeline of launch week: wishlist milestone on 14 August 2026, closed beta announced 1 September, open beta 5 September, pre-load 9 September, Early Access at 16:00 UTC on 10 September](/assets/img/wardogs-release-date-fig-week.png?v=3abe587d) *Launch week, every date from the studio's own announcement feed. Read 30 September 2026.* ## The first hours, in the studio's own numbers The launch-day figures come from a studio retrospective in which the team shares its own screen: at one point **45,590 players were in a match and 168,000 were waiting behind them**. The login handoff was supposed to pass 100 players a second; about ten got through, so roughly 90% were stuck, and each stuck player left behind a queue ticket that made the line longer. At its worst the queue held around **300,000**. The team then admitted players by hand, in blocks of 10,000, and the executive producer confirmed that about 11 people were given a queue jump, calling his own decision “a bit unfair” ([PCGamesN](https://www.pcgamesn.com/wardogs/sales-player-count-broken-queue), 12 September 2026, read 30 September 2026). The studio's own hotfix post the same day describes the same mechanism from the inside: everyone already logged in was pushed back to the login queue, and players were let in “in controlled batches” while the team watched server population ([official Steam announcements](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/announcements/), 10 September 2026, read 30 September 2026). The same retrospective reports that the anti-cheat banned legitimate testers in that window, two well-known first-person-shooter broadcasters among them. ![Four launch-day figures: 45,590 players in a match, 168,000 waiting, about 300,000 at the worst point, admitted in batches of 10,000](/assets/img/wardogs-release-date-fig-queue.png?v=fcbe906b) *Launch-day queue figures as the studio gave them to PCGamesN on 12 September 2026, labelled reported rather than official. Read 30 September 2026.* ## The counter, from the same week Copies moved faster than the queue drained. The studio's own posts put it at **1.25 million on 11 September**, **two million on 15 September** and **three million on 26 September**, the last of them described as “3 million copies sold in just over 2 weeks since launching into Early Access” ([official Steam announcements](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/announcements/), read 30 September 2026). PCGamesN reported 1.5 million on 12 September, between the first two milestones ([PCGamesN](https://www.pcgamesn.com/wardogs/sales-player-count-broken-queue), 12 September 2026, read 30 September 2026). Concurrency crossed 428,000 the same week. That figure is third-party, recorded by a community database that mirrors what Steam exposes and syndicated into the announcement feed, so it is labelled here as reported rather than official; Valve publishes a live count but no per-game history ([Steam current-players API](https://api.steampowered.com/ISteamUserStats/GetNumberOfCurrentPlayers/v1/?appid=1867240), read 30 September 2026). The studio's nearest official statement is the 400,000 peak-concurrent claim in its own maintenance post. ## Season 02: live official patch notes **Season 02 is dated 15 October 2026.** The studio's completed [Season 02 Patch Notes](https://steamcommunity.com/games/1867240/announcements/detail/670630562731396446) set maintenance at **08:00–09:30 UTC** and estimate roughly 90 minutes of downtime before the season goes live (read 15 October 2026). This is an Early Access content update, rather than a full-release date. official live status **Update 0.2.0 was released and Season 02 is live.** The studio says servers were back online; its developer-pinned Steam discussion records “Season 02 is now live” at 10:00 UTC after the maintenance extension (the [official live announcement](https://steamcommunity.com/games/1867240/announcements/detail/688645594881720804) and [developer-pinned update](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/discussions/0/574929704291811513/), read 16 October 2026). The completed notes confirm four weapons, four vehicles, three buildables, rain, balance, progression, server and interface changes. They also say the Wager Vendor will open later in Season 02, not at launch. The 16:00 UTC time above belongs to the September Early Access launch, not this update. Read the [patch-note summary on the gameplay page](/wardogs-gameplay#season-02-preview) (official patch notes, read 15 October 2026). ## Which build you get if you start now Buy after the release date and you get the post-changelog build, not the beta build. The Season 1 changelog posted on 9 September 2026 slowed the early levelling curve and widened the late one, and the numbers are unusually explicit — each row below is the studio's own before-and-after ([official Steam announcements](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/announcements/), 9 September 2026, read 30 September 2026): XP required to reach each level, before and after the Season 1 changelog of 9 September 2026, in the studio's own words and percentages. | Level | Beta | Season 1 | Change | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Level 6 | 8,750 | 9,250 | +5.7% | | Level 10 | 25,000 | 35,000 | +40.0% | | Level 15 | 54,750 | 110,000 | +100.9% | | Level 20 | 111,500 | 250,000 | +124.2% | | Level 25 | 192,000 | 325,000 | +69.3% | | Level 30 | 293,750 | 400,000 | +36.2% | | Level 35 | 416,500 | 500,000 | +20.0% | | Level 40 | 551,250 | 650,000 | +17.9% | | Level 45 | 689,500 | 800,000 | +16.0% | | Level 50 | 838,000 | 1,000,000 | +19.3% | Two more changes move money rather than time, and both are in the same post: the Forward Operating Base went from **$2,500 to $7,500** and the Large Hammer from **$1,600 to $2,400**, while the Support-track Large Hammer unlock went from $25,000 to $75,000. Two XP payouts moved the other way: a player kill in an air vehicle now pays 250 XP instead of 300, and a supply-crate item sold below $75 pays 1 XP instead of 25. Unlocks were rearranged at the same time — Artillery moved to Career 90 and the Heavy Tank to Driver 35 — which is why any unlock table dated before 9 September 2026 is now wrong ([official Steam announcements](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/announcements/), 9 September 2026, read 30 September 2026). ## How each claim on this page is labelled This site sorts every conclusion into one of three buckets, and this page is no exception. The buckets are the point: a reader deciding whether to buy should be able to tell a studio statement from our arithmetic. Every claim on this page, sorted. Read 30 September 2026. | Layer | What is in it | | --- | --- | | Confirmed by Valve or the studio | The release date 10 September 2026 and the Windows-only platform (Steam store data). The $39.99 price with a 0% discount. The “around 1 to 2 years” Early Access window and the statement that the price rises at full release (store Q&A). The console year 2028 and the 16:00 UTC hour (studio's own copy on wardogs.com). The wishlist, beta, pre-load and hotfix posts, the 1.25 / 2 / 3 million sales posts, the Season 2 date of 15 October 2026, its 08:00–09:30 UTC maintenance window, and every figure in the Season 1 changelog table. | | Observed, not officially confirmed | The first-hours login-queue numbers: 45,590 in a match, 168,000 waiting, about ten of a hundred per second, around 300,000 at the worst point, manual admission in blocks of 10,000 and roughly 11 queue jumps. These are the studio's own figures as reported by a third party on 12 September 2026, not an official post. Also the 1.5 million sales figure, which is PCGamesN's number rather than a milestone the studio posted, and the 428,000-concurrency record, which comes from a community database. | | Not yet confirmed | The full-release date, the full-release price, which consoles arrive in 2028 and when in that year, and whether any beta runs again before 1.0. | ## Still not on any official record Some things this page would like to print do not exist in an official source, and leaving them out would hide the shape of the answer. They are listed here instead: - **A full-release date.** Not on the store listing, not in the announcement feed, not on the game's own site. The only forward markers are Season 2 on 15 October 2026 and the “around 1 to 2 years” range. - **A full-release price.** The store Q&A says the price will be higher at 1.0 and publishes no figure, so this page prints none. Any number you see for the 1.0 price is unsourced. - **Which consoles, and which month in 2028.** The year is stated; the platforms are not. - **The local times in the table above as published times.** The studio printed the hour once, as 16:00 UTC and 12:00 EDT. The other twelve rows are our arithmetic and are labelled as such. - **An official length for the launch queue.** The “around 300,000” figure is a studio remark reported by a third party; no official post states a peak queue length. - **An unlock hour in Valve's own channels.** Steam's listing gives the day; the hour is the studio's, published on its own site. ## What each WARDOGS site has, and what this page adds All three cover part of this ground, so here is the split as read on 30 September 2026. The field-guide site's release-date page gives the date, the 2028 console plan and the fact that 1.0 is unannounced, and it prints no unlock hour (wardogs.site). The community hub's page gives the hour and a full dated timeline, and its launch-night post goes deeper than any of the three elsewhere: queues that reset waiting players to a longer line (70,000 to 168,000, 90,000 to 280,000, 116,000 to 350,000), and a join-timeout error that turned up at 18:05 UTC (read 30 September 2026, release date, launch night). That hub also carries the Season 1 XP bands in its patch notes. The wiki is an item database with no release-date page. Two things here are not on any of them. The first is the studio's own retrospective figures for the launch window — 45,590 players inside a match with 168,000 waiting, one in ten getting through the login handoff, batches of 10,000 admitted by hand, about eleven queue jumps. The second is a discipline rather than a fact: every figure on this page sits next to the source it came from and the date it was read, every claim is sorted into one of three confidence layers, and the list of what no record holds is printed at the bottom instead of being left as silence. ## Before you buy on the strength of a date - **Check which build you are reading about.** The 9 September changelog rewrote the levelling curve, so a guide written from the beta describes a different game. - **Check the price on your own store, signed in.** The $39.99 here is Valve's United States figure with no discount ([Steam appdetails API](https://store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails?appids=1867240&cc=us&l=english), read 30 September 2026); regional pricing differs and is listed on [our price page](/wardogs-price). - **Do not wait for a full-release date to decide.** There is none, and the studio's own plan is a one-to-two-year Early Access window. - **Expect the price to move up, not down.** The store Q&A says the 1.0 price will be higher; there is no figure and no sale has run. ## Common questions When did WARDOGS come out? WARDOGS entered Steam Early Access on 10 September 2026, on Windows. Valve's own store data gives the release date as "Sep 10, 2026" and lists no other platform ([Steam store listing](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1867240/WARDOGS/), read 30 September 2026). It is still in Early Access: the next dated milestone is Season 2 on 15 October 2026. What time did WARDOGS unlock? 16:00 UTC, which is 12:00 on the US east coast, 09:00 on the US west coast and 17:00 in the UK. That hour is the studio's own wording: the launch trailer it publishes carries the line "Global Early Access Release TODAY | 16:00 UTC / 12:00 EDT" ([wardogs.com](https://wardogs.com/), read 30 September 2026). Valve's store listing prints the day only, and the local times in the table above are our arithmetic on the studio's 16:00 UTC. When does WARDOGS leave Early Access? There is no date. The Early Access Q&A block on the [store page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1867240/WARDOGS/) says the game is expected to remain in Early Access for "around 1 to 2 years" and that the exact duration may move (read 30 September 2026). No full-release date appears anywhere in the studio's announcements either, so this page does not print one. Is WARDOGS coming to console? Yes, and only as a year. The studio's own copy on [wardogs.com](https://wardogs.com/) says "Coming to consoles in 2028", and the [Steam listing](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1867240/WARDOGS/) carries no console build at all (read 30 September 2026). Which consoles, and which month in 2028, are not stated anywhere we could find. How many copies did WARDOGS sell? The studio posted the milestones itself: 1.25 million copies on 11 September 2026, two million on 15 September and three million on 26 September, described in its own words as "just over 2 weeks since launching into Early Access" ([official Steam announcements](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/announcements/), read 30 September 2026). PCGamesN put the figure at 1.5 million on 12 September, between the first two posts ([PCGamesN](https://www.pcgamesn.com/wardogs/sales-player-count-broken-queue), 12 September 2026, read 30 September 2026). What happened in the WARDOGS queue on launch day? At one point 45,590 players were in a match and 168,000 were waiting behind them. The studio says the login handoff should have passed 100 players a second and that about ten got through, so roughly 90% were stuck, and the line fed itself; at its worst the queue held around 300,000. The team then let players in by hand, in blocks of 10,000 ([PCGamesN](https://www.pcgamesn.com/wardogs/sales-player-count-broken-queue), 12 September 2026, read 30 September 2026). What changed between the beta and the release build? The Season 1 changelog posted the day before launch rewrote the levelling curve: reaching level 15 went from 54,750 XP to 110,000 (100.9% slower) and level 20 from 111,500 to 250,000 (124.2% slower), with the curve flattening from level 35 up. It also raised the Forward Operating Base from $2,500 to $7,500 and the Large Hammer from $1,600 to $2,400 ([official Steam announcements](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/announcements/), 9 September 2026, read 30 September 2026). Is WARDOGS still being updated? Yes. Season 02 is live: the studio says it released Update 0.2.0 and that servers were back online, while its developer-pinned Steam post says the season was live at 10:00 UTC after maintenance ([official live announcement](https://steamcommunity.com/games/1867240/announcements/detail/688645594881720804); [developer-pinned update](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/discussions/0/574929704291811513/), read 16 October 2026). This is an Early Access content update; it gives no date for the end of Early Access. When is Season 02 ? Season 02 arrived on 15 October 2026. After its 08:00–09:30 UTC maintenance window, the studio said Update 0.2.0 was released and servers were back online; its developer-pinned Steam post says the season was live at 10:00 UTC ([official live announcement](https://steamcommunity.com/games/1867240/announcements/detail/688645594881720804); [developer-pinned update](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/discussions/0/574929704291811513/), read 16 October 2026). The completed patch notes confirm weapons, vehicles, buildables, rain, balance, progression and server changes; the Wager Vendor is specifically scheduled for later in the season, not launch. See [the gameplay patch-note summary](/wardogs-gameplay#season-02-preview). Does your progress reset between seasons? Nothing official says it does. The two published statements closest to it are the Season 1 changelog's line that "each season we will have a different XP curve with different item orders", and the patch before it setting cash and XP to zero as a penalty for economy exploiters ([official Steam news posts](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1867240), 9 and 12 September 2026, read 2 October 2026). A season-end wipe is documented by the third-party hub as its own reading; neither Valve nor the studio has confirmed one, so this page leaves it unconfirmed. Where every figure on this page comes from, all read on 30 September 2026: the [WARDOGS store listing](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1867240/WARDOGS/) and Valve's [appdetails API](https://store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails?appids=1867240&cc=us&l=english) for the release date, the platform, the price and the Early Access Q&A; the [official Steam announcement feed](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1867240/announcements/) for the wishlist milestone, both beta posts, the pre-load and Season 1 changelog, the launch-day hotfix and the 1.25 / 2 / 3 million sales posts; [wardogs.com](https://wardogs.com/) for the 16:00 UTC unlock hour and the 2028 console year, both of which appear in the studio's own launch-trailer copy; and [PCGamesN](https://www.pcgamesn.com/wardogs/sales-player-count-broken-queue) for the launch-day queue figures and the 1.5 million figure, dated 12 September 2026 and labelled as reported rather than official wherever it appears. Times in the conversion table are our arithmetic on the studio's 16:00 UTC, and the concurrency record is third-party. Nothing on this page is a live value. ![WARDOGS release date card: 10 September 2026, 16:00 UTC, three million copies by 26 September](/assets/img/wardogs-release-date.png?v=6edf46b8) *Drawn for this page, dark or light to match. Dates and figures as read on 30 September 2026.* > Advertisement > [Surfshark — VPN plans and current terms](https://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-8083808-15438547) > Affiliate link through CJ Affiliate. We may earn a commission if you buy through this link. Check the current price and renewal terms on Surfshark's site. > Advertisement > [GearUP — game booster plans and current terms](https://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-8083808-17235975) > Affiliate link through CJ Affiliate. We may earn a commission if you buy through this link. Check supported games, the current price and renewal terms on GearUP's site. [The live Steam reading, and what changed on Steam this week →](/wardogs-steam) [Scoring, prices and platform support for WARDOGS →](/wardogs) [What the developers say about Early Access timing and the full game →](/wardogs-early-access) [What WARDOGS costs in eight Steam regions →](/wardogs-price) [All ten WARDOGS achievements and how rare each one is →](/wardogs-achievements) > On this page > > - [The hour, in your own clock](#s1) > - [What the release date was, in the studio's own sequence](#s2) > - [The first hours, in the studio's own numbers](#s3) > - [The counter, from the same week](#s4) > - [Season 02: live](#season-02) > - [Which build you get if you start now](#s5) > - [How each claim on this page is labelled](#s6) > - [Still not on any official record](#s7) > - [What each WARDOGS site has, and what this page adds](#s8) > - [Before you buy on the strength of a date](#s9) > - [Common questions](#s10) [SHOOTERATLAS](/) An independent reference for tactical shooters. Every number has a source. Every reading has a date. - [All published pages](/#directory) - [About & methodology](/about) - [Contact](/contact) - [Privacy](/privacy) Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any studio or publisher. - [Markdown](/md/index.md) - [Read-only API](/api/agent/pages) - [OpenAPI](/openapi.json) - [AI catalogue](/.well-known/ai-catalog.json) - [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaFMBF4EPVor__gBeNZguQg)