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4 min readWritten by ClutchBot News Desk WARDOGS

Wardogs will ban high-end PC owners for using 'potato shadows' in Season 3

Bulkhead says disabling shadows via in-game settings is now bannable for non-min-spec hardware, and the community says the rule makes no sense.

#news#wardogs#game-news
Wardogs will ban high-end PC owners for using 'potato shadows' in Season 3

What happened

Bulkhead, developer of the extraction shooter WARDOGS, used its "Road to Season 3" update to confirm that lowering a specific in-game graphics option could now get players banned. In a new post outlining its plans for Season 3, developer Bulkhead claimed that lowering in-game settings is now a bannable offense if your computer is good enough to handle higher-end settings. The setting in question is an ultra-low shadow option the community calls "potato shadows". Wardogs has an ultra-low 'potato shadows' setting that effectively removes them to improve performance.

The studio's own wording, posted via its official X account and echoed in the Steam announcement, is blunt: "In Wardogs we don't allow users to set 'potato shadows' via in-game settings unless we've detected their hardware is min spec," the announcement reads. "In Season 3, we will be forcing a reset of this setting on launch to prevent users who don't need this setting using it. If you force a workaround to this (to be clear, specifically potato shadows NOT potato mode) on higher end hardware than the users it's intended for, we will consider this bannable from Season 3." Bulkhead later clarified on X that using nvidia inspector or 3rd party software to remove smokes, grass or changing textures is considered bannable, and that in Season 3, if you have one of these settings set, you will be blocked from playing with a warning popup on launch, with a forced workaround treated as bannable.

What changed

  • Forced reset at launch: potato shadows gets reset for anyone whose hardware doesn't qualify as min-spec when Season 3 lands Thu 12 Nov 2026 (AEST, Brisbane; Sydney/Melbourne also 12 Nov under AEDT).
  • Bannable workaround: forcing the setting back on via config edits or third-party tools on non-min-spec hardware is now an enforceable offense, separate from existing anti-cheat rules.
  • Tied to a bigger ban wave: the same devlog revealed Bulkhead had already banned 185,000 accounts for cheating after reviewing 187 million hours of gameplay, with positive reactions from parts of the community on Steam celebrating the ban wave.
  • Season 3 context: the change arrives alongside the new Sabatulo map, three-month seasons going forward, and a progression reset, per Bulkhead's confirmed 12 November launch.

What players are saying

Reaction to the shadows rule specifically has been largely negative and confused, distinct from the goodwill around the cheater ban wave. On X, one reply bluntly argued that different rules depending on your hardware seems pretty dumb (X reply to @WARDOGSUpdates). Another user who compared near-identical GPUs said a 3060 user disabling shadows is treated as legitimate, while a 3060 Ti user doing the same is a potentially bannable unfair advantage (X reply). A separate X post called the two-tier enforcement "moronic" and said it should apply to everyone or no one (X, gaming commentary). Over on the Steam forums, players are asking practical questions — including whether a fresh reinstall is needed to avoid being retroactively flagged after swapping hardware (Steam Discussions, WARDOGS forum). TheGamer's own analysis summed up the core complaint: not everyone will read the patch notes or look at social media, and risk being blindsided by a ban simply for changing their in-game settings, which breaks a fundamental contract between players and devs.

What it means for you

If you're on OCE servers and have ever used potato shadows to squeeze out frames on a mid-range rig, check your hardware against Bulkhead's min-spec detection before Season 3 drops on 12 November — the setting will be force-reset regardless, so don't manually fight it back on. Bulkhead hasn't yet published the full Season 3 patch notes (promised "early next week"), so exact enforcement detection details are still unconfirmed — treat this as a heads-up, not the final word, and watch for the official patch notes before assuming how it applies to your specific GPU.

What to watch next: Bulkhead's promised Season 3 patch notes preview, due early the week of 9 Nov, should spell out exact detection and enforcement details before the 12 Nov (Thu, AEST Brisbane / AEDT Sydney-Melbourne) launch.

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.