{"id":1690714,"date":"2026-09-12T13:36:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/EYEbwwqCiveiysjZNcH8vZ"},"modified":"2026-09-12T13:36:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:36:31","slug":"wardogs-sold-over-1-million-copies-in-its-first-24-hours-making-its-launch-a-bright-spot-in-an-otherwise-tough-year-for-multiplayer-shooters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wardogs-sold-over-1-million-copies-in-its-first-24-hours-making-its-launch-a-bright-spot-in-an-otherwise-tough-year-for-multiplayer-shooters\/","title":{"rendered":"Wardogs sold over 1 million copies in its first 24 hours, making its launch a bright spot in an otherwise tough year for multiplayer shooters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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All signs have pointed to Wardogs<\/a> being a hit for a while now. Its beta weekend in August was rapturously received, with half a million players<\/a> lining up to check out its prerelease playtest. When the game launched into early access last week, so many people rushed to get on board that it collapsed the game’s servers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, developer Bulkhead has released its initial sales figures for Wardogs, and they are unsurprisingly very strong. The multiplayer FPS sold 1.25 million copies within 24 hours, and that number is likely to be much higher by now.<\/p>\n

Bulkhead played it cool<\/a> while announcing the milestone, simply thanking players and reassuring them that the studio is “watching everything, monitoring servers, and enjoying watching you play”. That middle point is likely made in response to the flurry of negative reviews Wardogs received in the wake of its server troubles.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, it’s heartening to see an unambiguous hit in the multiplayer FPS sphere after what has been a difficult year for new competitive shooters. 2026 started badly when Highguard<\/a> ran directly into a brick wall in January, launching to initially high player counts that quickly plummeted to an unsustainable level\u2014resulting in the game shutting down<\/a> mere weeks later.<\/p>\n

In March, Bungie released Marathon<\/a>, which is one of my favourite games of this year and a real triumph of both art and game design. Yet despite its qualities, it’s pretty clear that Marathon has not been the success that either Bungie or Sony hoped. Despite numerous experiments to revive the game’s fortunes, its concurrent player numbers<\/a> are now significantly lower than those of Destiny 2<\/a>\u2014which Bungie rather suddenly wrapped development on<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

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