Bulkhead has revealed the main content for War Dogs Season 3, which is expected to launch on November 12 and will add maps, progression paths, and a Limited mode. The studio has also launched a new anti-cheat system, claiming to have banned 185,000 accounts in one go.
The studio acknowledged that the adjustments made in Season 2 in response to negative feedback were too radical, and that the team was influenced by some player opinions and the post-launch drop in player numbers. The cash incentive experiment designed to balance the weaker Blue Team was withdrawn after just one day, and the studio stated it would no longer rush into modifying the game just to quickly calm public outcry.
Detailed report from foreign media:
War Dogs’ launch performance was incredible, but in terms of live-service game development, Season 2 became Bulkhead’s “sophomore album problem.” To rebalance the weaker Blue Team in the game, the development team briefly tried using cash rewards as incentives, but this measure was canceled after just one day. Meanwhile, a series of adjustments made by the studio in response to player concerns ultimately stripped much of the fun from this military first-person shooter.
Now, with Season 3 approaching, Bulkhead has addressed the mistakes made during Season 2 and explained how the new season will resolve these issues, including a new map, a new mode, new progression paths, and an AI-driven anti-cheat system.
At the beginning of the “Road to Season 3” video, Bulkhead issued an apology. Howard Philpott, Bulkhead’s UI/UX Director, stated in the video: “In learning how to adapt to live-service game operations, we decided in good faith to respond to negative feedback with actions rather than words. When the patch notes were released, the initial feedback on paper looked very positive. But once the season actually went live, public opinion quickly took a sharp turn for the worse.”
Bulkhead believes their changes were too radical, that the studio was too susceptible to loud and fickle player voices, and that they were overly concerned about the inevitable player churn after launch. Going forward, Bulkhead intends to stand its ground. “No matter how surreal this launch has been for both us and you as players, we as developers, and you as players, must hold our ground and not rush out fixes just to appease the loudest voices.”
That said, Season 3 will still bring several changes to War Dogs, hopefully with more careful consideration. First is the new map called Sabatulo. Compared to War Dogs’ existing battlefields, Sabatulo focuses more on urban environments, aiming to deliver more close-quarters combat than other maps and giving players more reason to equip shorter-range weapons.
However, arguably the more significant change is the multi-path unlocking. Instead of limiting each unlockable item to a specific character, Bulkhead has adjusted the progression system: theoretically, as long as an item is usable by a certain character, players can unlock it by playing as that character. This is a stopgap measure, as Bulkhead is working on a larger-scale overhaul of the progression system, expected to launch in 2027. But at least this adjustment should mean players no longer have to repeatedly play characters they don’t enjoy just to obtain the items they want.
In addition to adjusting the progression system, Season 3 will introduce a new “Limited” mode that removes high-tier weapons, armor, and vehicles from the available roster. The idea is to create a more level playing field, allowing more casual players to enjoy the game without being constantly slaughtered by fully equipped super-soldiers. Adding this option makes sense, and I’m eager to see how popular it ultimately becomes.
Finally, Season 3 also heralds the arrival of an anti-cheat system. Bulkhead claims it is “one of the most advanced anti-cheat systems in the world,” developed by the studio by “leveraging machine learning and AI to analyze 187 million hours of gameplay data.” The system was reportedly already live at the time of the video’s release and immediately banned up to 185,000 accounts.
According to Bulkhead, the studio originally planned to roll out this system later in War Dogs’ lifecycle, but the game’s immense popularity provided them with the necessary data to deploy it early. Joe Bramer, CEO of Bulkhead, said: “To train the model, we needed cheaters to go through the process of constantly refining and debugging their cheats so we could observe how these programs evolved. This approach gave us time to analyze and build consistent case reports to identify those cheaters trying to hide in the shadows.”
As for the AI elements, clearly, “AI” is currently a highly controversial term, and often for good reason. However, this specific, proprietary machine learning technology is not necessarily the same kind of AI as the general-purpose large language models that are ruining Everythinggj from emails to greeting cards. Bramer stated that this system cannot completely eliminate cheaters, and cheating will always be an issue “unless governments start criminalizing the development of cheat programs”—a statement very much in character for Bramer. Nevertheless, the studio seems to believe that this system will help provide a better gaming experience when Season 3 launches on November 12.
