WARDOGSWARDOGS caps ping at 175ms, builds region locks to fight cheating — OCE players caught in the crossfire
Bulkhead's anti-cheat ping cap is splitting the community, with Australian players reporting they can no longer group with SEA friends.
What happened
Bulkhead, the studio behind extraction shooter WARDOGS, announced on X on Wednesday 21/10/2026 that it's capping maximum server ping at 175ms and building region-locking into the backend, in a direct response to a cheating wave the studio admits it let get out of hand. Over the next few hours the studio reduced the maximum ping on a server to 175, after deciding to protect the largest amount of players from an influx of regions more prone to cheating.
Bulkhead called the move disappointing given how central the social, cross-region experience is to WARDOGS, but said it had to prioritise the largest group of players over the minority. Region locking itself is still being built on the backend and the studio says it's "more than a switch" to get working properly. Bulkhead said it had tried letting regions mix and compete, but that experiment "has not panned out as we'd hoped" and it will now be stricter about cross-region play.
Bulkhead didn't name the problem regions outright, but players have been complaining on Steam forums for weeks about large numbers of cheaters from China on European servers.
What changed
This isn't the first cap players have seen — a softer, unannounced 170ms test was already live in some pools before the official 175ms rollout, and it was already reshuffling who plays where. BULKHEAD's explanation doesn't identify the affected regions or provide supporting cheating statistics. The full region-lock system — which would hard-separate regions rather than just cap latency — is in progress but not finished.
What players are saying
Reaction is loud and split roughly down the middle. On the supportive side, one prominent X commentator said the majority of the time they ran into a cheater, that player had 200+ ping, so they understood why the change needed to happen, even if it was sad it did. A Steam discussion thread was similarly blunt: "This is 100% a great update to the game, they was allowed to swap regions use passive pings and caused nothing but disruption to the game."
The backlash is just as strong, and it's loudest from Asia-Pacific players. One Steam thread reported the earlier 170ms soft lock had caused "tremendous grief" to SEA players, with SEA servers already flooded from China and now overwhelmed to the point of being unplayable. The same thread noted SEA players previously had Oceanic servers as an escape valve, and with that option gone, they're asking why Bulkhead is "punishing" East Asia and SEA players. One Australia-based player wrote directly: "I'm a migrant in oceania. with the 170 ping region lock, me and my friend can't find a suitable server for the both of us to play in." A separate Steam thread had an Australian player describe getting kicked from an SEA server within five minutes for a 150ms ping while trying to play with friends based there. Outlets covering the change agree the community is divided — Bulkhead's decision has split the community, with many backing the developers while others doubt it will solve the problem.
What it means for you
If you're playing on Sydney/OCE servers solo or with local mates, this shouldn't change much day-to-day — Oceania hub ping for Australians typically sits well under the 175ms cap. The pain point is cross-region squads: if you regularly group with friends on SEA, Asia or US servers, you're now more likely to get capped out or kicked, based on multiple reports above. Region locking proper isn't live yet, so expect more server shuffling (and more complaints) before this settles down.
What to watch next: Watch for Bulkhead's next update on full region locking, which is still being built on the backend with no date given.
Sources
- WARDOGS official announcement
- WARDOGS Wages Controversial Region Warfare Over Cheating
- WARDOGS Developers Introduce 175ms Ping Cap and Region Locking to Fight Cheating
- WARDOGS Caps Ping at 175 ms and Plans Region Lock Over Cheaters
- Soft Ping Region Lock just PUSHES all players from China to flood SEA (Steam Discussion)
- Got Kicked by high ping now??? (Steam Discussion)
- Region Locking Ping Caps - W Devs (Steam Discussion)
Researched and written by ClutchBot News Desk (Claude + live web search) for The Clutch Club — PapaKow's community. Community voices are paraphrased. Spotted something wrong? Tell us in the Discord.