{"id":771583,"date":"2026-09-15T16:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T16:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/771583\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T16:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T16:26:14","slug":"the-shooter-that-tencent-abandoned-wardogs-hits-2m-sales-in-one-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/771583\/","title":{"rendered":"The shooter that Tencent abandoned: Wardogs hits 2m sales in one weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listen now on Apple<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n

In This Edition,
Bulkhead\u2019s Joe Brammer on\u2026<\/p>\n

The surprise success of Wardogs<\/p>\n

The realities of crunch<\/p>\n

Being clear, not transparent <\/p>\n

The FPS Games Show, and more<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In December last year, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer warned his 100-person team they faced redundancy.<\/p>\n

The UK studio, best known for the military first-person shooter Battalion 1944, had been owned by Tencent. But the Chinese giant no-longer wanted it. Brammer was working on a deal with investment group Hiro Capital and Team17 parent Everplay, but there was no guarantee of success.<\/p>\n

So Brammer advised his team: if you can find a new job, take it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened was the whole team went, \u2018Joe, we\u2019ve got your back, you can do this\u2019,\u201d Brammer shares on today\u2019s episode of The Game Business Show.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019m there like, \u2018I can\u2019t do this! Take the job! I\u2019m telling you we\u2019re going down!\u2019 It was a great team moment and they stuck together, but if we hadn\u2019t pulled it off, I would have been like, \u2018Guys, please\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The money did come in, but the situation was still precarious. Its longer-term survival rested on its 100-player tactical first-person shooter Wardogs. Under Tencent, the game was planned as a significant AAA title, but now it needed scaling back with an Early Access approach. The \u201cbare minimum\u201d it needed to sell was 400,000 copies. Bulkhead would still need to make some redundancies, and take on co-dev projects, but it would survive. If it could sell 600,000 units, that would have been \u2018okay\u2019.<\/p>\n

Wardogs sold one million copies in pre-orders alone. That number has now surpassed two million.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t had much time to celebrate,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was obviously a lot bigger than we expected. Which is great, it\u2019s also been: \u2018Oh my God.\u2019 Like DDoS attacks, constant cheaters, and things that, at scale, are just bigger problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bulkhead now face the good challenge of trying to work out how to deal with this success. It will mean hiring more people, but Brammer is wary having overseen six years of continued layoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the last six years, we have made redundancies every single year, about 20% of the company. This will be the first year we haven\u2019t done it,\u201d he reveals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very conscious of scaling up and upheaving people\u2019s lives, and also getting a stain for doing this. We want to lean more and more into the gig economy approach. What we\u2019ve been doing is going, \u2018You\u2019re really good. We want you to leave your job and come work with us. Why don\u2019t you do 12 or 18 months remote? And if we get along, we\u2019ll give you a big load of money in a fixed offer to come and work for us in-office\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely need to scale. But we need people, and the cost of co-dev is so high and the reliability is so low, the best way for us to do it is to hire internally. So, we\u2019re trying to rush, and people who like FPS games are who we\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWardogs is closer to Meccha Chameleon than it is to Call of Duty\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Brammer believes is key to Wardogs success. The first-person shooter genre may seem impenetrable from the outside. But if you have a team that loves the genre, then it\u2019s possible to break in.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery few people make a game like Battalion 1944 and the game bombs, I mean it made some money and got us on the map, right? But it bombs. And then you go, \u2018Let\u2019s try that again, but bigger.\u2019 No one does that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very penetrable, but to pretend you can be an analyst wanting to get into FPS games is a mistake. You have to be an FPS player, because the community is so vicious and fragmented. I\u2019ve said this a couple of times to people: Wardogs is closer to Meccha Chameleon than it is to Call of Duty. When we were designing Wardogs, it was about the social aspects. If you look at men 18 to 40-years-old, there\u2019s a lot of lonely, bored, or underappreciated men who miss their mates. Wardogs\u2019 audience is 99.9% male. That doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t want women playing the game. But we realized we needed to provide a space for them to have fun and do silly things, a space where a 35-year-old man can still make a penis joke. That\u2019s kind of what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly found its audience. And with two million sales in one weekend, you\u2019d have to imagine Tencent is feeling a sense of regret.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a great time with Tencent, and this game wouldn\u2019t be possible without them,\u201d Brammer tells us. \u201cThere are people at lots of the companies we\u2019ve worked with over the years, as far back as Square Enix – they were our first publisher – I think everyone like that is kicking themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cTencent has got plenty of good things coming. But with Wardogs, they pushed us really hard to make something great.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can watch or listen to our full interview with Brammer above, or read on for more highlights.<\/p>\n

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With the technical problems, Brammer advised dissatisfied players to get a refund and then return once the issues are solved. It\u2019s somewhat in keeping with Bulkhead\u2019s brand, the firm even put out a marketing video before launch listing 10 reasons not to buy the game.<\/p>\n

I asked about this level of transparency and honesty, but Brammer insists that\u2019s not what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not transparent, and we\u2019re not honest. We\u2019re being clear. Right now, it\u2019s in our interest to be transparent about some things, but we\u2019re not telling everyone everything we\u2019re doing. The brand is becoming that they believe we\u2019re transparent and honest. That\u2019s creating a new problem in that if we choose not to be transparent or honest about something, therefore we\u2019re moving away from the thing that people believe we are.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always been the same. My LinkedIn is famously divisive. There was something from Satya Nadella where he said \u2018people should know what a leader stands for\u2019. People know what I believe. They know I don\u2019t believe in work-from-home for making video games. They know I expect people to crunch. I own that. I don\u2019t try and hide it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues: \u201cWe knew that \u201810 Reasons Why\u2019 video, when we wrote it, was a hit. But in many ways, it was obvious to us. It\u2019s obviously not Call of Duty. Don\u2019t buy us if you want to play Call of Duty. So, just saying it and owning it in all aspects of Bulkhead and Wardogs\u2019 marketing has been the way to go. But I wouldn\u2019t necessarily call it honest and transparent.\u201d<\/p>\n

That clarity can be helpful in business as much as it helps with players.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know what we want to make. This was the problem from Square Enix up to Tencent, Splash Damage, and even Team17, to some degree. Through each layer we\u2019ve gone through, we\u2019ve got tougher, saying, \u2018We don\u2019t want to listen to you.\u2019 Sometimes that makes enemies. But what we\u2019ve found it\u2019s usually the middle management layer that seems to really struggle with having their position threatened. The higher-up people seem to really like our approach: \u2018We know what we\u2019re making. If you don\u2019t like it, don\u2019t fund it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wardogs didn\u2019t make it into Gamescom Opening Night Live, and so Bulkhead decided to do its own showcase dedicated to shooters. The aptly titled: FPS Games Show.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It went] better than we thought,\u201d Brammer says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really cool that we could make something specific and bespoke for that audience. To be clear, I\u2019d love Geoff to come in and take this over, because it was harder than I thought. And he\u2019d do a better job.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur very public and unfair feedback to big shows is that I don\u2019t want my big game to be next to an Asian MMO, because it\u2019s my big opportunity and you just get mixed messaging. Then the players dogpile something, but they never should have even been watching it. But we wanted to be in those big ones, right? There\u2019s a prestige that goes with it that the FPS Game Show will never deliver.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to do more of a festival-type thing going forward and to have some sort of paid tier, because it did cost us a fair bit, but really just covering costs. And then having a pre-show, a bit like an opening act, where for free you can put those teams of 1 to 10 people making neat FPS games. We\u2019re toying with different ideas at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Brammer is open about the fact that he expects his team to crunch when the time comes. He compares the situation to a balancing act, but one where things shift from one extreme to the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the last three months, Wardogs has been more important than a lot of [our team\u2019s] family lives,\u201d Brammer says. \u201cBut now, Bulkhead and I have to acknowledge that it needs to go the other way. Everyone\u2019s pushing us to get console out earlier, and we\u2019ve said, \u2018No, that\u2019s not how it\u2019s going to work. We can\u2019t push them more. We\u2019re not doing that. It\u2019s going to release in 2028\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company will be getting the whole of December off, Brammer adds.<\/p>\n

His perspective on crunch is undoubtedly controversial, but he says he\u2019s upfront about it. It\u2019s not something a new recruit is going to discover after joining.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people who may have an issue with crunch – rightly so, I understand that issue, we always try and avoid it, but we don\u2019t hide that this is going to happen at some point – they often don\u2019t make it in the door,\u201d he says. \u201cWe want to be known for that: this is a place you come to work hard. If you care about the work you\u2019re making and the result of what you make here, you\u2019ll feel really valued. If you don\u2019t, you will feel slave-driven. We check people\u2019s socials, and if you\u2019re constantly tweeting anti-crunch messaging: \u2018This should never ever be a thing\u2019, we know that and go, \u2018Look, you\u2019re not going to be happy here, so we\u2019re not going to go with you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The upside to working like this, Brammer says, is the financial reward. Not everyone within Bulkhead owns shares or receives bonuses, but those that do get a meaningful amount.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re going to be a company who says, \u2018We do crunch\u2019, then we have to also say, \u2018But you get something for it.\u2019 We want people to know that those people who do work hard get that return, and it is life-changing.<\/p>\n

He concludes: \u201cI\u2019m going to be really excited to see juniors who have been with us for two or three years who are going to get money to buy a house, or at least a down payment. What we actually find is we have to coach them…. please don\u2019t spend all your money on takeaway and energy drinks. We have a new responsibility to our younger staff who are making good money, often money they haven\u2019t seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out our full interview with Joe Brammer in the links above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube In This Edition,Bulkhead\u2019s Joe Brammer on\u2026 The surprise success of Wardogs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-771583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}