George In The Meta
What gets you banned in WARDOGS?
By George In The Meta · · updated
Short answer: exploiting the cash or XP economy, and cheating. On 7 October BULKHEAD banned a Twitch streamer and around 20 of her players for roughly a week each over a FOB money exploit, and said the decision is final. Teamkilling, in my experience, gets you kicked from the server, not banned.
What got players banned on 7 October?
A cash exploit built around a FOB got players banned on 7 October. Per a player's breakdown of the streams, a premade squad of about 20 built a FOB on the edge of the combat zone, packed it with bunkers, then arranged for the enemy to capture it, game after game. It was reportedly making the group $300,000 to $500,000 a game.
If that scoreboard is from those matches, the money was per player, not for the group: the top 17 each earned between $362,000 and $534,000 in one match, most of them with zero or one kill.
BULKHEAD's response on 7 October was short: "known cash & xp exploit abuse will no longer be tolerated. These punishments will stand. This decision is final." I'm not naming the streamer: Brammer has asked people to stop piling on her.
What did I see in the clips?
It just looked organised. I've watched the clips now, and the stream was titled "Money Making Stream", which is how the player breakdown has it too. The only word missing from that title was "exploit".
Their defence later was that it wasn't an exploit: they were just tricking the enemy team. But the understanding I got from what I saw is that their pals were on the enemy team. I could be wrong, and clips can be cherry-picked. It would be very hard to cherry-pick something into looking like this, though, and it doesn't match what people who watched it live said they saw.
One clip posted on 8 October says it better than I can. A squad member says "I'm so getting banned for this" and "I mean, we're kinda exploiting, I don't know." The streamer's answer: "If you believe this is exploiting, I got a door for you right on the left side of there… You walk right out of it."
Then her defence, in her own words: "I'm building a base and letting them cap it and blowing it up. That's not exploiting." That's the money loop, described by the person running it. (Quotes transcribed from the clip on X.)
How long are WARDOGS exploit bans?
The 7 October ban was seven days. The streamer posted her own ban screen, which the player breakdown quotes: "Reason: Exploit abuse", with 167 hours 58 minutes left.
Brammer says that was lenient: "if anything they were lenient compared to what we had said on Steam."
What they said on Steam was in update 0.1.2 on 30 September, which promised zero tolerance and permanent bans "without warning" for XP and cash exploits and real-money trading. So the official line is permanent, and this week's ban came in well under it.
Is seven days enough?
No, a seven-day ban isn't enough. Ban them for longer. Fully get rid of their access, and teach them the price of knowingly exploiting and breaking the rules. The game is $39.99 on Steam, so that's what it would cost them.
Watching the clips didn't change that. If you knowingly do something wrong, you get the hardest punishment there is. Not much gets stolen in Dubai, and I can't think why.
Is the FOB exploit fixed?
For Season 02, yes. Brammer says the exploit "has been fixed for season 2" and that BULKHEAD has "added data tracking for the behaviour and events now." He also said a lot of the players involved immediately turned the cash into gold bars and skins, "so there was no gameplay there, nothing organic, purely a cash loop."
Gold bars carry over into Season 02 when the wipe resets cash and XP, which I've covered in my Season 02 wipe page.
Is there a new money exploit in WARDOGS?
It looks like it. On 11 October a Japanese player posted on X that spawn points were acting strangely, and that someone was farming money with medical supplies and crates: about 1.8 million within minutes of the match starting.
I'd already seen something like it two days earlier, on 9 October, on a 100-player Asia server. One player went from $1,890,000 to $2,467,500 cash earned in under two minutes, with 0 kills, 0 assists, 0 deaths and 0 revives. The next highest player on the server had $38,372.
I think he got to about $2.7 million before he was kicked. And that was before any team had even reached 25 points: green was on 24, and red and blue were on zero.
I wasn't the first one to notice. At least one player from each team was in all chat talking about watching his money go up, and then everyone was. Nobody could see him. All chat was asking his team if they could see what he was doing, so I can't tell you if it was the medical supplies and crates trick from the Japanese post.
I assume he was solo. If he'd been in a squad, I think there'd have been more people around him at that money level, and maybe people in chat telling everyone not to report him. Instead everyone reported him, and it wasn't long before he was gone. I think it was the reports that did it, because all chat was full of people saying they'd reported him.
Most of a server will come together to report a cheater if it's super obvious. The only time they don't is when it's more subtle. Recently a lot of people have been reporting Havoc pilots, but that's not the pilots cheating. The Havoc is just overpowered. It's disgustingly easy to get loads of kills with it.
Is the FOB exploit still happening?
Yes, on my servers, days before the wipe. In two matches on 12 October, players on my own team, red, built a FOB just outside our headquarters and drove Urals back and forth delivering supplies to it. They're clearly trying to exploit it for either cash or XP: the deliveries never go anywhere near the fight.
Because they were on my team, I could hover over them, see who it was and report them. It's been different people each time, and they don't stay there long. I don't know if that's my report getting them flagged and kicked, or something automatic based on how close the FOB is to headquarters. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the second.
That fits what BULKHEAD's CEO said about the FOB exploit above: fixed for Season 02, with data tracking for the behaviour now added. Season 01 is still running until the 15th, so this is the old game, three days from the wipe.
Does a new exploit days before the wipe bother me?
No. There are always going to be exploits, because some people are always going to be losers. I don't think it's on BULKHEAD to change the trajectory of people who've fallen so deep into capitalism that they want the biggest number in a game, even when they have to cheat to get it.
Does exploit money carrying into Season 02 bother me?
No, it doesn't bother me. It's so they can tell their pals: look how slick I am, I've got this skin for this gun because I used gold to buy it. They just leave out the part where they cheated to get it.
It's the same as the bodybuilding influencers who claim to be natural while obviously running more gear than Ronnie Coleman.
Have I seen exploiting in my own matches?
I've never looked into exploiting, because I'm not a loser, and I don't see what you gain from it. But I have seen FOBs placed suspiciously: inside or even outside the play zone, in the gap between teams, with only a couple of players at them.
I don't care enough to drive two kilometres out to see what they're up to. But there's no reason to build there if you're helping your team.
The exploits I actually notice are the ones that hit the players around them straight away. There's one to reload the grenade launcher in the Little Bird helicopter faster, and another that lets it shoot through the front glass. Those affect people immediately.
Is there a Ural speed exploit in WARDOGS Season 02?
It looks like it. On 17 October a teammate in my Europe game was getting his Ural up to 142 km/h by driving it to the zone backwards, after a spin turn. When I asked how he was doing it, he said "spin turn and just let it ride", and when I asked what speed it got to: "142". Driving forwards, my own Ural tops out at 79 km/h.
I watched it happen. I was in my own Ural behind him, doing 79 km/h, my truck's top speed, and he was still slowly getting away from me, while the map showed his truck facing the wrong way for the direction he was going.
I tried it twice and couldn't do it. The second time, rolling backwards down the hill, I only got to 29 km/h, and I don't know how you get it up to 142. My guess is you build up enough momentum downhill, spin, and it carries you on, but 142 is nearly double the Ural's actual top speed. On 18 October BULKHEAD's CEO Joe Brammer replied to a player who'd been told reverse drifting was an exploit: "Definitely not an exploit. Leave a car in gear and see what happens, then put it in neutral down hill and see what happens." He called it "incredibly realistic", and added: "Whether we want to keep that behaviour, well let's see." He didn't mention speed, so it isn't clear whether a backwards Ural at 142 km/h counts (why a hill can't get a Ural to 142). BULKHEAD is temp banning Season 02 exploiters and resetting their cash and XP, so until it says more, it's still a risk.
Does flying a vehicle get you banned in WARDOGS?
Yes, permanently. On 20 October the official WARDOGS Updates account said some players are exploiting a bug with ground vehicles that lets them "fly" around the map. A server-side hotfix is on the way, and in the meantime "anyone caught abusing will be perma banned" (WARDOGS Updates on X).
I've seen one, and I didn't really understand what it was. I thought it was just a visual bug on my end, the same as when I first saw the Ural going backwards at 142. I didn't realise either was actually happening in the game.
A permanent ban is fair. I think a lot of people get let off too leniently for the stuff they do, and it doesn't stop them.
Does WARDOGS ban Nvidia Inspector bush removal?
BULKHEAD is looking at it. On 16 October a player posted that a streamer was selling subscribers a way to set up Nvidia Inspector so bushes disappear, and asked WARDOGS to make it a permanent ban. Joe Brammer replied on 17 October: "Yeh we're on it and we've also let @Twitch know." He hasn't said what the punishment will be.
Why do I hate exploiters?
I hate the exploits that hit everyone else. If you want to farm money and gold, fine, do that. You're just a loser who wants a big number to show your friends without explaining you cheated to get there.
Farming cash doesn't directly affect me, and I don't know that it's winning anyone games. The grind is a bit rough, I'll give them that. But organising 20 people to farm money from a FOB on stream is peak admitting you're a loser.
Can you get banned for teamkilling in WARDOGS?
I haven't seen a ban for it, but I've seen people kicked. My brother got kicked from a server for teamkilling, and it was an accident: someone built a wall in front of his mortar while he was still on it. He wasn't banned. We just had to join a different server.
How do you know if something is an exploit?
My test for whether something is an exploit: if it feels aggressively unintended, I don't do it. Someone in my stream chat told me to animation-cancel the hammer, so you swing it faster and build up quicker. That felt aggressively unintended, and not something to be doing, so I didn't.
The grenade launcher firing through the Little Bird's front glass is the same: it's clearly doing something against what the game loop wants. Brammer's own test for the FOB exploit was that it was "obviously not an intended part of the game", and he said it would have been great if the streamer had raised it with them instead.
What gets you banned in WARDOGS?
In WARDOGS, cash and XP exploits and cheating get you banned. BULKHEAD has said both are bannable, the 7 October bans are final, and the FOB exploit is fixed with tracking for Season 02. A new money exploit was being used on servers as of 9 to 11 October, and I hadn't seen BULKHEAD comment on it when I updated this page. For cheaters specifically, see is WARDOGS still banning cheaters in Asia.
