You ever get the feeling that a game is about to make a big splash, but nobody you know is talking about it yet? That’s where I’ve been with Wardogs, the 100-player milsim FPS that I haven’t stopped thinking about for weeks. Wardogs has steadily built buzz over the past year, recently eclipsing a million wishlists.

Developer Bulkhead held a closed beta this past weekend for those who pre-ordered the $40 early access release, which reached over 100,000 peak Steam players on Sunday—more simultaneous players than Squad, Hell Let Loose, or Arma has ever seen on PC. In a beta debrief video published today, game director Howard Philpott said over 500,000 total players tried Wardogs.

“The reaction from the FPS community has been insane,” Philpott said, “with nearly half a million unique players showing up to play the closed beta the same week as Call of Duty’s beta and Battlefield 6’s massive update.”

I don’t share these figures to stoke obsessive number comparisons between very different flavors of shooter, but to point out how different it is for an FPS as crunchy and complex as Wardogs to already have an audience this large.

I reckon it speaks to a shift in tastes that’s been in progress since PUBG and Escape From Tarkov came around. Wardogs is neither a battle royale nor an extraction shooter, but the popularity of those genres has set the groundwork for its shared qualities to be instantly accepted—milsim stuff like realistic ballistics, large maps, and restrictive inventory isn’t as niche as it once was.

It also helps that Wardogs makes a good impression with its economy hook. Players have a persistent wallet of in-game money used for buying guns, unlocking gear, tipping pilots, and bribing medics to save your life. Money is earned by doing anything useful: killing enemies, reviving teammates, capturing objectives, or giving someone a ride. It’s a fun, freeform system for encouraging teamplay through selfish desires (cash money).

Wardogs enters early access on September 10.