Does WARDOGS have cheaters?

Does WARDOGS have cheaters?

Yes, and I've watched two of them work this week. I'm PapaKow, I play WARDOGS from Brisbane, and on the nights of 27 to 29 September 2026 I ran into a chopper pilot doing something no legitimate player can do and a bloke reviving himself in a game that has no self-revive. What I can't tell you is how big the problem is. I can only tell you what happened in my lobbies.

The chopper pilot

He'd come in, one-shot a building with his missiles, kill the players in it, and then instantly crash into the ground. Not get shot down. Crash. He did it on several occasions in the one session. That's very weird gameplay. By killing himself straight after the kills he's covering his tracks — "hey, I got these kills" — but me, crashing into the ground and killing myself, how does that happen? I don't know what he was running. I know what I watched.

The self-revive

We downed a player, we all called self-res when he got back up, and then it hit us at the same time: wait a minute, there is no self-res in this game. It took everyone by surprise and it was hilarious. We got on the mic to him and he just gave up and stopped. That one isn't ambiguous. There's no reading of WARDOGS where that's a feature.

Am I being hunted, or am I just getting beaten?

This is the part I want to be careful about, because it's the part everyone gets wrong. Since Monday I've had moments where players just know where I am. Fights I'd normally be able to approach, I can't approach any more. It feels suspicious. But WARDOGS has spotter scopes in it — I might simply be getting spotted and called out, which is the game working exactly as designed. I can't pinpoint it and I'm not going to accuse someone because I lost a gunfight. I also see players post their streaming channel in chat and then get hunted and team killed for the rest of the match, which looks like cheating from the inside and is really just people being grubs.

So: no doubt there are cheaters. Whether they're in my games, yes and no. I'm hoping the percentage isn't as high as everyone thinks and I've just been unlucky with some very suspicious situations.

What are Bulkhead actually doing about it?

Their published security and enforcement policy — last updated 7 September 2026 — says anti-cheat runs alongside the game whenever you play online, that cheating and tampering are the most serious things on their list, and that they'll go to a permanent or hardware ban with no prior warning. Only permanent account bans can be appealed; hardware and temporary bans are final, and they aim to respond to appeals within 30 days. The policy doesn't name the anti-cheat provider. It also makes a point worth repeating: reports are more useful than they look, because they tell them where to point the detection.

I also read an X post from Joe Brammer at Bulkhead about how much AI-assisted data work they're doing across their games — pulling it from players and streamers and checking whether the feedback lines up with what the data says. That's my read of it, not a statement about the anti-cheat specifically. But it lines up with what I'd want: the chopper pilot who kills four people and then drives himself into the dirt five times in a night is a pattern in a database, not a judgement call. I'm hopeful they have the data to see it.

What I'd do

Report them in game, every time, even when it feels pointless. Don't accuse in chat off a feeling — I've had the feeling and I've been wrong about the feeling. And keep the clip if you get one.

Thursday warm-up is 6pm Brisbane and I'll be on the OCE servers. If it happens again I'll bring the timestamps.

You gotta stay gaming.