BULKHEAD's first podcast: a four-to-five-week Season 2, three-month seasons after it, Intel progression pencilled in for Q2 2027, a limited-gear mode — still no Season 3 date

What BULKHEAD published

On 24 October at 16:00 UTC BULKHEAD posted the first episode of The Hotzone, an official WARDOGS podcast, on YouTube (1 h 10 min; Spotify and Apple Podcasts followed at 17:40 UTC). Joe Brammer, executive producer and studio lead, sits down with Pete (lead designer), Mark (technical designer, the economy, cash and XP) and Tim (creative director) to go through the Season 2 launch week with their own numbers. The episode's own description calls Season 2 the game's first wipe in Early Access, which settles a question BULKHEAD's written posts had left open. The format is pitched as extra context between vlogs; the dev vlog with the Season 3 direction is now due later next week.

Progression: what the data said

The studio's read is that the season was too fast, but mostly not for the reasons the first weekend's posts suggested. The Lonestar XP bonus was only 2.5 per cent, yet it pushed blue to roughly a 67 per cent win rate until it was pulled about ten hours in, after which the sides evened out. The driver exploit touched fewer than 400 players, but tanks turned up in 30 to 40 per cent of games and the share of players driving went from 9 to 44 per cent on day one. The bigger structural numbers: 1.5 million unique logins in the first 24 hours against 3.4 to 3.5 million unique players across Season 1, so the returning crowd is the committed one, and its top quarter levelled 2.4 times faster than in Season 1. The fastest games got shorter (the top 5 per cent from 46 to 41 minutes) and end-of-match bonuses had been 30 to 40 per cent of a role's progression. Underneath it all, Mark calls the career-level system fundamentally broken: last season 70,000 players reached level 35 while millions stalled at levels 9 and 14, and a career level says little about role level.

Season length and the wipe

Brammer repeats the line from the launch weekend: no wipe that day, because the average player was enjoying the season, but an earlier one — four or five weeks instead of the six to eight originally planned. No date is attached, and two of his colleagues say announcing the earlier reset at all was the mistake of that weekend, so treat the timing as direction rather than a commitment. Looking further out, the studio says it cannot keep up monthly seasons and now plans roughly three-month seasons with a smaller update halfway through. Steam reviews slipping to Mixed after the launch weekend is given as the reason the 17 October apology video went out when it did.

What is coming next

• A limited-gear mode: dedicated servers that recreate the low-to-mid game, without infrared binoculars.
• Intel: the seasonal, paced resource that was always meant to drive unlocks — earned at a steady rate, reset each season, uncapped for heavy players but slower at the top — now pencilled in for around the second quarter of 2027, with persistent skill trees to follow it.
• Infrared binoculars: an open debate on air, not a decision — remove (Pete), rework (Tim) or shorten the battery (Mark); they already lose 400 to 500 m of range in rain, and foliage should block them.
• A new map set around a hospital, half bowl and half flat, is in internal play; no date.
• From Brammer on X the next morning (25 October, 08:49 UTC): a bug that lets players fly is fixed for Season 3, and the players abusing it show up in the data and are banned.

What it means for your climb

• Nothing changes in the game today: the Season 2 progression, prices and the 175 ms ping cap all stand.
• The wipe is closer than the original calendar said. Our Season 3 date stays an estimate until BULKHEAD names one; if you are buying a levelling boost, plan to use the levels within weeks rather than months.
• The limited-gear mode and Intel are the two changes that will alter how a boost is played — one takes the late-game gear out of the lobby, the other re-prices every unlock — and neither has a date.
• Exploits are watched in the data: the flying bug and the driver exploit were both followed by bans, so an order played by the rules is the only kind worth having.

What we are watching

The dev vlog BULKHEAD now puts in the second half of the week of 26 October, for a Season 3 date and the wipe details; any written notes on Steam; Brammer's replies on X; and whether the limited-gear servers get a date before the season ends.