A month before launch BULKHEAD did what any marketing department would argue against to the last: they made a video called "10 reasons NOT to buy WARDOGS". Not ironic — literal.
"Before the hype train gets out of control, we want to do something most AAA marketing teams would tell their dev teams to never do — give you 10 legitimate reasons why you should not buy Wardogs."
What they admitted
- Not enough content at the start of Early Access.
- The price — an EA game asking what a finished one would.
- Visual fidelity below what the big shooters have trained people to expect.
- Their previous shooter, Battalion: 1944, did not work out. They said that themselves.
They also stated an expectation studios rarely say out loud: the audience will shrink noticeably in the months after launch, and a sustainable community for them is 3,000–5,000 concurrent players a day. For a game that peaked at 105,774 in a test, that is remarkably sober.
What happened next
The game immediately became the top-selling premium title on Steam. The video meant to scare people off did the opposite — because it is not really about flaws. It is about who the game is for: a slower, heavier shooter for people who want exactly that, rather than for everyone at once.
The same idea returned later in the monetisation interview: "we said don't buy the game". For them it is not a joke but a filter.