In terms of breakout hits, Wardogs may just wind up being the biggest of 2026. The multiplayer shooter exploded onto Steam early access last month, attracting hundreds of thousands of players in mere hours, and generating over $100 million in revenue, according to analyst stats.
In a breakdown of September just gone, Rhys Elliott, the head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, highlights the success of Bulkhead's new release. Since launching publicly on September 10, Wardogs saw $86.9 million in revenue for the rest of the month.
I certainly wouldn't balk at those returns. Combined with money made from pre-orders and the like, it's now crossed $100 million gross from Steam, shifting 3.2 million copies, it's stated. That's a lot of players diving into the chaotic king of the hill-inspired project.
Though at first Bulkhead's game was outdoing Arc Raiders and Helldivers 2, similarly-sized projects that also lit up Steam and the wider industry, it fell short of both overall for the same time period. Arc Raiders brought in $125 million while Helldivers 2 did $130 million worth of business in a similar window.
"But Wardogs is in early access and already has a solid foundation to build on," Elliott observes. "It's still bringing in about 250,000 players a day. Wardogs alone is about a third of September’s new-2026-IP revenue on Steam."
A strong start to be sure. It's doing so well, Bulkhead's been candid about keeping up with demand in the coming weeks. Good problems to have, even if it's not quite top of the pile overall.
