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4 min readWritten by ClutchBot News Desk WARDOGS

Wardogs dev Bulkhead takes all of December off, CEO tells players to go play GTA 6

CEO Joe Brammer confirmed the whole studio is downing tools for a month after Early Access and Season 2, with no updates until January.

#news#wardogs#game-news
Wardogs dev Bulkhead takes all of December off, CEO tells players to go play GTA 6

What happened

Bulkhead Studios CEO Joe Brammer has confirmed the entire Wardogs team is downing tools for the whole of December 2026, telling fans not to worry about the game in the meantime because "Go play GTA 6, we need to detox," Brammer says. The news broke via an interview with Edge Magazine, reported by GamesRadar+ on Wed 4 Nov (AEDT Sydney/Melbourne, AEST Brisbane).

With the early access launch of Wardogs in the rear-view, the entirety of developer Bulkhead Studios will be taking an extended break, with leave stretching throughout the entire month of December. Brammer didn't soften the message for players either: "We're going to make sure players know they can fuck off in December," he says, suggesting the team does have some idea of the backlog of bug reports and balance complaints that could be waiting for them come January.

The break is being framed as earned leave rather than a crisis move. The decision comes after months of hard work, with Brammer explaining that team members regularly stepped outside their usual responsibilities to help bring the game to players, saying "Everyone wears multiple hats, because they can see the path to success with the product."

What changed

  • Studio-wide shutdown: Bulkhead Studios CEO Joe Brammer told Edge Magazine the entire studio is taking a break throughout December 2026.
  • No updates for a month: Brammer acknowledged the downside: a full month without updates means players will wait longer for bug fixes and balance changes.
  • Return planned for January: a Bulkhead social account (posting as the studio's "Lossy" handle) told fans on X the plan is to take the foot off the pedal in December, but come back in the New Year refreshed and ready to go again, with plenty to talk about and new content to show off before then.
  • Context: this follows Wardogs' Early Access launch in September and the recent Season 2 rollout, both of which the CEO says pushed the team hard.

What players are saying

Dedicated r/Wardogs megathreads weren't turning up fresh in search at time of writing, but reaction on X and Steam gives a decent read. It's split.

  • One of the more upvoted replies on X, from a player going by "The Bones," pointed out the awkward timing: Season 3 is set to land right as GTA 6 and a new Zelda both compete for attention, questioning why Bulkhead would step back now (X, reply thread on Lossy's post).
  • Press reaction leaned positive on the vibe, with GamesRadar calling it "almost refreshing to see a team unapologetically accepting that its fans will have something else on their minds."
  • Steam sentiment heading into this news was already shaky: the game's recent 40,000 reviews are averaging to "Mixed" with only 51 percent being positive, so a month of radio silence lands on top of existing frustration rather than goodwill.
  • It's not the first blunt comment from Brammer this cycle — he's also recently defended crunch culture at the studio, which colours how some players are reading the "f*** off" line as more tone-deaf than funny.

What it means for you

If you're grinding Wardogs over the Christmas–New Year break, expect zero balance patches, bug fixes or dev comms for the entirety of December — matchmaking and OCE servers should stay up, but don't expect any Bulkhead attention if something breaks. Realistically, with GTA 6 and other big releases landing in the same window, population dips on Australian servers during December are likely regardless of what the studio does.

What to watch next: Watch for Bulkhead's January return and whether Season 3 content drops as promised once GTA 6 and other big releases have had their moment.

Sources

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.