WARDOGS patch 0.11: the server-browser split, the 14 September maintenance, the 5% community bonus and the economy-abuse bans

'It's time we own up. Community Servers have been underserved and the server browser experience as a whole has been poor. It is clear to us that we have not put the same amount of care and passion into Community Servers that we have into the rest of the game. As a result, we worked through the night to pull together an update that will start the process of improving the server browser in favour of community servers.' And: 'We have failed to do that by rushing our Community Server strategy. As we've always said, when we're wrong, we'll hold our hands up. We got this bit wrong.'

The context is the 8 September '11th Reason' post, which had pushed community servers as the anti-cheat answer — 'for the ultimate protection, play on community hosted servers where admins can instantly ban bad actors' — sold through three approved hosts (QONZER, BisectHosting, xREALM). If the studio tells players to go to community servers, the browser has to find them; 0.11 is the fix.

The sequence, in UTC: Early Access opened on 10 September; Hotfix #1 at 20:20 the same day; '1.25 MILLION COPIES SOLD!' at 01:05 on the 11th; SteamDB's 400,196 concurrent record on the 12th; the patch 0.11 post at 22:26 on the 12th, opening with 'Thank you for helping us hit 400,000 Peak Concurrent Users. We are completely humbled by the response'; maintenance at 08:00 UTC on the 14th. BULKHEAD says the update was assembled overnight — 'we worked through the night to pull together an update' — which is why it is narrow: a server browser rework, two fix lines, capacity, and policy.

That narrowness is the point of the version number. 0.11 is a quality-of-life patch, not a balance patch; the Season 1 changelog three days earlier carried every price, XP and unlock change, and 0.11 explicitly separates itself from 'the content we're working on for Season 2'. Read the two together: the changelog set the game's economy for the season, and 0.11 fixed how you find a server to play it on.

'We will be taking the servers down temporarily on Monday September 14th for approximately 1 hour to run maintenance and deliver an update.' The post gives local times; here they are as published.

Split front end into two browsers, Community and Official. BULKHEAD's reasoning: 'A game with this many players realistically should be using matchmaking, and server browsers aren't massively fit for purpose, but we don't want Community admins and hosts to suffer. They're the lifeblood of the community who keep a game running well beyond its peak player days.' Removed unnecessary filtering from Official Servers — 'we do not have Official modified game modes'. Improved reliability of filtering in Community Servers. Added text-based search to Community Servers. Community Server IDs now persist between matches and restarts — 'each server will have its own unique ID so players can join via ID. However the number will be much longer for security reasons.' Added Show Empty/Full to the browser quick bar. Updated the Host button to direct to the correct location. Server name ordering and naming — 'alphabetical regardless of special characters and numbers. You will no longer be allowed to use more than one space at a time.'

For players, the practical changes are three: two tabs instead of one list, a search box on the Community tab, and server IDs that survive a map change so a squad can rejoin the same server by number.

The Season 1 changelog of 9 September had already 'reworked server browser filtering', fixed 'community server images scaling incorrectly' and pointed the Host button 'straight to the hosting page'. Three days later 0.11 removed filters from the Official tab entirely, added search to the Community tab and rewrote naming rules — a second rework in five days, which is what 'we have not put the same amount of care and passion into Community Servers' means in practice. The 8 September anti-cheat post had told players community servers were the safest place to play; the launch browser then made them hard to find. Reading the three posts in sequence — promise, launch, apology — is the clearest picture of how BULKHEAD handles a mistake: it names it in the same channel and ships the fix over a weekend.

Two lines under 'Other Fixes': 'Various cash exploits have been fixed' and 'More GPU crashes addressed'. One under 'Increased Capacity in Asia': 'We have increased the server capacity in the Asian region to support the interest coming from that region… We will be putting more focus into supporting Asia as an important part of the worldwide Wardogs playerbase.' The Steam listing supports fourteen languages including Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and the maintenance table's Asian rows reflect where the studio sees demand.

Three lines in the post are rules rather than features. Names: 'We have enforced new requirements on servers to make them alphabetical regardless of special characters and numbers. You will no longer be allowed to use more than one space at a time' — so a server named to sort first with symbols will be renamed or re-sorted. IDs: each server's ID now persists across map changes and restarts and 'will be much longer for security reasons'; publish it to your community once, and it stays valid. Hosting: the Host button now goes to the hosting page, i.e. the approved partners (QONZER, BisectHosting, xREALM) listed on wardogs.com's server hub. The 5% cash bonus applies to community servers as a class, which for the week of 12–19 September made them the better place to grind and, for admins, the easier place to fill.

This is the section to read carefully, because it sets precedent. BULKHEAD: 'The economy of WARDOGS interlinks all players together into one shared universe and experience… As an early access game, we're not perfect, and we never will be. But if you do find something and take advantage of it, we have decided to come down hard.' Three categories follow.

Abusing cash exploits and bugs: 'We will respond with a timed ban, the length of which will be determined based on any previously applied bans. We will reset your cash and XP to 0.' Creating content that tutorialises economy exploits and bugs: 'We will treat creating content that tutorialises how to abuse systems, with no regard for reporting the issue, as advertising cheats. This will result in a permanent ban. There are easy ways to get things in front of us. We are not saying do not post on social media or Discord. We are saying there is a difference between promoting and alerting.' XP farming: listed as the third category. The published enforcement policy on wardogs.com (7 September) already covered 'deliberately exploiting bugs, glitches or unintended behaviour' and 'playing to farm rewards rather than to play the game'; 0.11 attaches specific consequences.

'We are still working on a list of features we have seen requested from communities as a priority. This doesn't affect the content we're working on for Season 2, but we are heavily focused on reactive quality of life feedback for the very short term. These features are not yet ready but are in the pipeline.'

No balance changes: prices, XP bands and unlock levels are as set by the Season 1 changelog of 9 September. No new content — no maps, weapons or vehicles, consistent with BULKHEAD's stated Early Access focus on the core experience. No change to anti-cheat policy beyond the economy section. No console or Linux news. If a page elsewhere claims 0.11 altered a price or an unlock, it is wrong; the post's only economy content is the bonus and the penalties.