Bulkhead Shuts Down WARDOGS for a December Break and Sends Its Players to GTA 6

Bulkhead Studios, the studio behind WARDOGS, has decided to close for the holidays for the whole of December. According to Vandal, reporting on an interview with Edge magazine, CEO Joe Brammer confirmed that the development team will take a full month off and, while he was at it, offered his community an unusual piece of advice: use those weeks to play Grand Theft Auto 6.

The news matters for two reasons. First, because WARDOGS is one of the hottest games in Steam Early Access right now, where it landed in September, and a month-long pause for a live title never goes unnoticed. Second, because a studio publicly admitting it needs to switch off, and doing so by putting its people's health ahead of the patch schedule, is still a rarity in an industry used to permanent crunch.

What you need to know

• A full month off. Bulkhead Studios will halt its activity for the whole of December, according to Joe Brammer's statements as reported by Vandal.
• The official advice is to go play GTA 6. The CEO himself is encouraging WARDOGS players to spend that time on the new Grand Theft Auto.
• The reason is team burnout. Brammer explains that everyone at the studio has taken on tasks outside their job description to get the game out the door.
• Complaints and bugs will wait until January. The studio accepts that it will come back to a sizeable pile of reports to deal with.
• WARDOGS is still in Early Access. The game arrived on Steam in that form in September, so it is still very much in development.

A team that went beyond its job description

Brammer's words in Edge paint a picture of a studio that has relied on overwork to turn WARDOGS into a hit. As he tells it, every member of the team has been doing things that are not in their job description, juggling several roles at once because everyone could clearly see the path to making the product work. It is the classic story of a launch that goes better than expected and forces everyone to sprint for months just to keep pace.

The studio's response to that burnout is blunt: the whole of December off and a full-on detox. Brammer wants to make it clear to the community that the team will disappear for that month, and rather than hide it, he turns it into a direct, almost provocative message, recommending the most anticipated game of the year as entertainment in the meantime.

What it means for WARDOGS players

In practice, anyone playing WARDOGS should assume that nobody will be on the other end handling issues during December. The studio itself admits that when it returns in January it will face a considerable number of complaints and bugs reported by the community, which points to an intense start to the year in terms of patches and fixes.

Some context is worth remembering: WARDOGS arrived in Steam Early Access in September. In other words, this is a game that has been in players' hands for only a few months and that, by definition, is incomplete and subject to change. A month without updates at that stage is a significant gap, especially for those already treating it as a competitive title or as a base for creating content.

Our take

Here at the Underworld Lordz newsroom we applaud the decision, though with some caveats. A studio pausing for a month so its people can breathe should be normal, not news. If the team has spent months doing everything to keep the game afloat, rest is not a luxury: it is the only way they will still exist as a studio in January, and still want to improve WARDOGS. And we like that they say it straight instead of hiding it behind a lukewarm statement.

That said, for a competitive player or a content creator the situation is not so pleasant. Anyone who has bet on WARDOGS as their main game is left for a month with no support, with known bugs unfixed and no idea whether there will be balance changes on the team's return. That hits anyone organizing matches, scrims or streams around the title. The studio is right to give clear warning, but it would have been a nice touch to publish some kind of roadmap for January, even a rough one, so the community knows what to expect.

As for the advice to go play GTA 6, we think it is a smart move. Admitting that nobody can compete with Rockstar's launch in December is pure realism, and sending your community off to enjoy it conveys confidence. The risk, of course, is that some of those players never come back. If WARDOGS wants to be more than this autumn's fad, January will have to arrive with a hefty patch that proves the break was worth it.

What do you think?

The studio has chosen to look after its team rather than keep up the pace of patches, and that leaves players out in the cold for a month. Do you think it is a brave decision, or do you believe an Early Access game cannot afford to vanish for a whole month? Tell us in the team chat or on our Discord.