The shooter that Tencent abandoned: Wardogs hits 2m sales in one weekend

We're not transparent and we're not honest. That's not what we're doing. We're being clear. They know I don't believe in work from home for making video games. They know I don't stand for that. They know I expect people to crunch. Like I I own that. I don't try and hide it. For the last 6 years, we've made redundancies every single year.
Um and about 20% of the company. This will be the first year we haven't done it. The whole team went, "Joe, we've got your back. You can do this." And I'm there like, "I can't do this. take the job. Like, I'm telling you, we're going down.
Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. This week's edition is sponsored by Exola, so you already sell your PC game on Steam, but having a direct channel adds a second place to sell it, and the two can complement each other. Exola Publishing Suite gives you your own PC game store, a launcher with your branding and payments in every market you sell in, and you keep up to 95% of

every sale. Makes a lot of sense, right? More than a thousand PC game studios already sell direct, and you can have your own store live in days, not weeks. Find out more at publisher.exolo.com, or alternatively, click the links in the newsletter attached with this show. Speaking of which, let's talk about this week's show. So last week a 100player tactical shooter came out in early access called Warogs. It's from a UK studio called Bulkhead who are really well known for FPS games. They made Battalion 1944. They made the Touring test. They've also done work on PUBG. Now they've had a few owners down the years. They're once partly owned by Square Enix before being picked up by Splash Damage and Tencent to work on an ambitious Transformers title that ultimately didn't work out. Then last year, Tencent decided to divest from Bulkhead and the Derby based studio faced potential closure. That was before they were saved thanks to investment from Hero Capital and Team 17 parent company Everplay, which is just as well because Bulkhead has just launched Warogs to immense success. It sold 1

million copies immediately and has gone on to do even more. There are so many people trying to get into the game. There's been some severe server issues, too. It's just been a sensation. So, it's a good time to coax Bulkhead CEO Joe Bremer away from fighting all those fires to chat to the game business all about the title's launch. Check it out. Hello, Joe. Welcome to the show.
Hey, Chris. Big fan. I told you before I mow my lawn listening to this podcast, so I'm a very quiet lawn mower. The uh Well, congratulations. What a launch you've had. You were telling me before that you're quite tired from everything. Yeah, it's the Monday after and uh it's been uh just standing up a game of that scale was not what we kind of planned to do. So, it was obviously a lot bigger than we expected, which is great. It's just we've had to be there like, oh my god, DOS attacks and like constant and uh cheaters and like all just different kinds of things that scale are just

bigger problems and yeah, it's interesting. So what happened? You had 1 million wish lists and 1 million sales like straight away.
So I think we got to like 1.7 or 8 million wish lists by the time we launched.
Okay.
We had pre-orders. So the million units were we did in pre-order.
All right.
Which was really cool because I don't mind sharing with you. Our like to keep going we had to do like 400,000 units, right? And that was like bare minimum and we've got to do a load of code of work and then it was like okay the happy scenario like this is good, we're okay is like 600k and then this has gone crazy well is 900k. So we're doing really well just in pre-orders. So we're quite happy. I think at this point we're I think whenever this goes live it's 2 million units. So I think that's today it's going to cross. So wow we're really happy. But we haven't had much time to celebrate to be honest.
Yeah. Is it is it profitable already then?
Oh yeah. like it was profitable like

quite early on. So,
wow.
We we we run a tight ship and uh uh controversially tight ship perhaps and we live in Derby which is cheap. So, [laughter]
if nothing else.
Well, yes. This reminds me cuz I read your games article where 10-centent was suspicious of your budget. They didn't accept the fact it could be so cheap. Is that right?
Yeah. Not necessarily 10 cent as an organization more like individuals in that kind of layer often track are they spending more or less than they say. If they're spending more they're probably just trying to hit their deadlines. If they're spending less they're probably slow.
Mhm.
And we was we couldn't spend like loads of money. So yeah, but that's normal all publishers not specific to Tencent really. But yeah, that was one metric. And then you know now we're we learned a lot over the last few years with not not booming in in hiring. So now we're kind of facing that well we need to do some hiring but uh to support the scale but how do we not boom and not upend

people's lives and then inevitably have to make redundancies later in a few years time. So trying to balance that right now.
Yeah. Well is is outsourcing then the option there? Is that the solution? The problem with outsourcing we see is so often that the only way to make it viable is that the outsourcers will put or Kodo for example you get one superstar and then six juniors and they don't really know what they're doing. That's not always the case but that's how you make it financially viable. Whereas what we're seeing is that with an FPS game which is particularly difficult to make. The only one hard is probably like an MMO really. And with it being so difficult, you can't just be any team and jump in and do it. And when you're an expert team like we are in FPS games and Unreal Engine performance, if you come to us and say we're an Unreal Engine performance expert studio, we're like, "No, you're not." [laughter]
Yeah.
So, so it's it's quite hard. We're quite picky and quite demanding. So, what we've seen is we adopted the gig economy

to work for us. We've been quite public about we don't really do work from home. Don't really like it. But it's kind of not true in that we do love it, but we'll only take you for 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, and then we won't, you know, that's how that works. And it kind of works for everyone in that way.
Yeah.
Okay. Wow. Is there good problems to have there, Jack?
Yeah. It's where we're having to invest in leads and leadership and managers basically to manage these external people. So, we're having to pay quite a lot to kind of be a bit more professional than we were in the past perhaps, let's say. Well,
so what fires are you putting out then? you had such an influx of servers fell over and and and you had some warning this might happen, but uh it obviously exceeded even that.
Yeah, for an FPS game, you generally don't have loads of cues to get into the game,
but for a new MMOs, brand new MMOs, like you you will. But for us, we had an issue really early on with getting into servers, which meant there was a backlog at the queue, and when the queue had a backlog, it just meant it just got

bigger and bigger and bigger and was just taking stuff down. So we basically had no choice but to do our best to fix it and but but really we just stayed really calm. That was that was a amazing thing for us is we made a game years ago called Battalion 1944 that massively struggled at launch and uh obviously all of the servers went down. Everything was broken. It was just nowhere near we were just a bunch of kids making an FPS game. Because of that really negative experience we knew this time round we had to invest massively in it. So we work with a company called Pragma who kind of run our back end and we have our own backend guys who work with them. So we had a really really professional AAA backend team and that's what people probably don't see is that actually it looks like small indie team in Derby. We have 100 people and we haven't we've outsourced some of our backend work and you know it's a lot bigger than people think.
Do you think there's people over at Tencent right now looking at this going bugger. [laughter] Look, we had a great time with Tencent

and this game wouldn't be possible without them. I think there's people at lots of the companies we've worked with over the years. As far back as Square Enix, we were with them. They're our first kind of publisher. I think
yeah, I remember
everyone like that is kind of kicking themselves. But I'd say that like the one constant throughout that journey is my first year in the industry was Debbie Bestwick and Team 17. and she will not mind me saying that we tried to negotiate and I was big-headed and I turned her down twice when I was both times was like I shouldn't have done that afterwards and then this time she was like if you do that again I'm done with it [laughter] and she and she's being very nice and very helpful but her advice has kind of helped me get to this point where I went through so much learning as an indie dev who came through the British education system the British games education system into university into setting up his own studio and to kind of end up back with Team 17 and a British publisher has been a really good journey, but I wouldn't say Tencent specifically are kicking themselves cuz I think they've got

plenty of good things coming. But with War Dogs, they pushed us really hard to make something great and that was our time there.
Very Joe answer there.
It's true. Debbie and not to de derail it, but years ago on games and shop bits. She was incredibly supportive, very encouraging of me to go off and do game business and and had loads of calls um chats with her. Um I had a family tragedy in 2018. She um invited me to up to see her and spent the day with me. Lovely person.
She's she is scary but nice. She keeps me in line. So that's
scary but nice. That's uh yeah told no prisoners I guess.
The iron lady of the games industry
maybe. I'm not sure. I'm not sure she'd like any of these descriptions, but I think she would. I think she would. [laughter]
You obviously you've been you're quite known for being transparent and honest. I noticed that you've been actively encouraging players who have had some of the issues to take a refund and then maybe come back later. Um, does that level of sort of, you know,

transparency, that level of honesty, is that really important, do you think, from a brand loyalty point of view, is that what you think about when you say those sort of things? It's quite funny because I've had this sort of question a lot throughout the last few weeks in Gamescom and we're not transparent and we're not honest. That's not what we're doing. We're being clear.
Mhm. [clears throat]
And right now it's in our interest to be transparent about some things, but we're not telling everyone everything we're doing and we're not, you know, I don't I'm not saying we're lying. I'm saying that like the brand is becoming that they believe we're transparent and honest and that's creating a new problem and that if we choose not to be transparent or honest about something that therefore we're moving away from the thing that people believe we are. Whereas we've always been the same. We've kind of you know my my LinkedIn kind of not I don't want to say famous but famously divisive. I get no likes on my comments but somehow everyone at Gamescom has said I love that post you did. right? Or you could have clicked like, but in the um in the like I think

there's too much and this goes for the game marketing side as well, not saying what you mean and not being clear.
Mhm.
And I something from Sata I forgot his name for uh Nadella. Yes. Where he said like people should know what a leader should stand for. And at Bulkhead and and online people know what I they know what I believe. They know I don't believe in work from home for for making video games. I They know I don't stand for that. They know I expect people to crunch. Like I I own that. I don't try and hide it. That doesn't mean that we also didn't try and do the 4-day work week and make workplaces better. They know I care about my team and my very close team. And I think with War Dogs and how we did this marketing approach, it very much came from not just me but also Howard um one of our founders and a few of our founders who were very frustrated on our journey from Square Enix to now with people who are have the inability to say what they want or to hold themselves to account and with

Warogs holding ourselves to account saying for example we're not going to monetize in early access is a kind of big thing but also being clear and saying don't play the game if you want these things because we're not that. Don't be upset. And I think people respect we we we knew that that 10 reasons why video when we wrote it, we knew it was a hit. We knew that already, but in many ways it was like obvious to us. Yeah, it's obviously not Call of Duty. Don't buy this if you want to play Call of Duty. You know, it's obviously not. So, I think just saying it and owning it in all aspects of bulkheads marketing or Warog marketing has been the way to go, but I wouldn't necessarily call it honest and transparent. Like, we we have elements of being honest and transparent, but I think that's a mistake to say that because spoilers, Chris, I'm not giving you all the answers. It's a shame. [laughter] That's why I'm here. Well, you talk about that 10 reasons why is it what was the name?
10 reasons why not to buy the game.

Not to buy the game video. You know what was quite interesting about that is it ring this this maybe this tenuous thing but I went when one of my first interviews on the game business was with Arrowhead called Divers 2 and obviously they had an idea of what their game was. They had a vision for their game, but then they had this situation, which maybe you're in now, I don't know, where they suddenly got an influx of Call of Duty players and they're like, "Oh, we weren't expecting you guys to like this game." And then they adapted their game to what they thought Call of Duty players wanted. And in the end, they realized that was a mistake. And they had to
move back to the sort of game it was supposed to be because ultimately people wanted the different things. But um I guess you you sound to me like you're talking about clarity. Does that clarity help you? Yeah, setting expectations I think is and expectation management is really important. Like we can't pretend that we didn't set Warog's expectations really high and that we said it's going to be a really good game. And you know, lo and behold, Warogs is a good game. There were people at Gamescom saying, "Hey, like how would you do this in your 10 reasons not to buy?" I'm like, "Well, your number one reason can't be that the

game's a bit That can't be the number one reason." And you know, the game was good. So, we were confident, but the the the biggest challenge for us now is that we were quite clear with the players, but they won't all have seen it. Is that we said we're not going to uh basically you would struggle in any of our marketing or messaging in the last two years to see where we say listen to feedback from the players. You you'll struggle to find it. You may say like listen to the community or like observe or things like that, but we know what we want to make. And this was a problem throughout not just 10-centent from Square Enix up to 10-centent splash damage and even team 17 recently to some degree. And what what we've learned is each each layer we've gone through is people have understood like we've got tougher is what I'd say and been like we're not listening to you. We don't want to listen to you. We don't want to listen to you. And sometimes that makes enemies. But what we found is usually the middle layer of all publishers, it's to be clear, all publishers and

businesses in the industry, a middle management layer seems to really struggle with having [snorts] their position threatened and needing to exist and needing to control. And the higher up people in all of these companies getting seem to really like our approach in that we know what we're making. This is what it is. If you don't like it, don't fund it. And that has been rewarding us. So, we're now sticking with that. The problem is it hasn't gone wrong yet. and I'm sure it will soon and I'll have a lot of people telling me I told you so. But that was mostly my journey at Splash Damage, there was a lot of like I'll try this, it'll work and it didn't. So yeah, we we we've
Well, if you ever listen to my interviews with live service games, I actually asked that question a lot which is like how do you listen to the players but also stay true to your artistic vision? And they always have an answer and it's always around you listen then you go right what can they're saying mean for us in our game. I yeah I think we're in a unique position right where we didn't go this is what the early access version of the game will be and this is what the big version game will

be. We were making a big AAA game and then had to choose to go alone and we need to make a smaller game to then release it in time in a reasonable budget. So instead of designing a game and then Arrowhead being example of how do we change how do we keep it going? um or Grazone Warfare, another example. How do we figure this out now? We were like, what do we not do to get it smaller? And then now when we're like, we know what we're making and players giving us feedback, we're like, we already have all the answers. Like especially when it comes to some of our balancing stuff in the bigger game, we have the answers. We have to keep building that thing uh that we're always building. So, it's sort of a model early access game in that we designed the full game for years and then very late went let's just build half of it.
Yeah. Well, in the old days, people would uh put that as the first game and then the sequel would be the game it's meant to be. We live in a live service world.
It very much is that.

Yeah. I have to say when I think of shooters and I think of this genre and you think of the games that succeed in it and they're always ones that break through here and there, they still often I bring up Her D is not the best example because yes they're quite a small team but like you Battlefields and even the Arc Raiders everyone talk about Arc Raiders being a sort of small AA game and that was a lot of people and a lot of money. It was it was a lot less money than Battlefield, but that's that doesn't hide the fact that it was a huge project. And here we are sort of talking about and I know it's very early days like they all could disappear tomorrow, I guess, but um you've got a huge amount of success very very fast. Is it always a bit of a myth that this is an impenetrable genre? It's it's it's one to say because I think um Warox has a very unique background from a team. Mhm.
Very few people make a game like Battalion 1944. The game bombs. I mean, it made some money and got us on the map, right? But it bombs and then you go, "Let's try that again, but bigger." Like, no one does that. So, I think it's

very penetrable. But I think to pretend you can be an analyst wanting to get into FPS games is a mistake. You have to be an FPS player because the community is so vicious and fragmented. And I've said this a couple times people um War Dogs is closer to Mecca Chameleon than it is to Call of Duty. For me, like when we were designing Warogs, it was about the social aspect. And if you look at men 18 to 40 years old, there's a lot of lonely or bored or underappreciated uh men who miss their mates. And Warog's audience is 99.9% male. Doesn't mean we don't want women playing the game. It means it's a huge demographic there. And I think what we realized was we need to provide a space for them to have fun and do silly things.
Mhm.

And a a space where a 35year-old man can still make a penis joke. [laughter] It's kind of what it is. And we wrapped it in this military aesthetic because I think it grounds it and people can very quickly understand the rules whereas something sci-fi that you be like, I don't know how that's going to work. So we basically made a social experience where people are basically playing digital rock paper scissors. You know, you buy this gun, there's a counter for that. You buy this one, there's a counter for that. And that that's and they're just doing stupid things and getting stuck. Like everybody thought that all of the publishers, all of them that were with this said, you can't have team killing on. And we were like, absolutely not. We need team killing on. The amount of funny stuff that happens with team killing, it's hilarious. Um, so I think when you look at shooters, people look at them in a different way to how we as players look at them.
They're opportunities to spend time with your friends. And that is what we were trying to do.
How did your FPS game show FPS FPS game

show? How did that go?
Better than we thought. Harder than we thought. M
I think it was really cool that we could make something specific and bespoke for that audience cuz I think um as you I'd love Jeff to come in and take this over because it was harder than I thought but um I think and he'd do a better job too for God's sake but um the reality is that our very public and unfair perhaps feedback to big shows obviously one of which being some of the ones that Jeff himself is involved is that I don't want my big game to be next to
an Asian MMO.
Yeah.
And because it's my big opportunity and it just you just get mixed messaging and then the players kind of dog pile something but they were they never should have even been watching it, you know. So I think breaking it up was really the way for us to go and seems to

have worked.
We faces it himself. He said it on when we came on actually talk about the game awards that it doesn't work for every game and also you are competing. It's a very competitive space. You know it's all about everyone's trying to outdo each other's trailers and all that kind of stuff. If you're Capcom when you're trying to find a wider audience in Resident Evil beyond your core base and there's an opportunity there. But yeah, I'm a Nintendo fan. You could tell. So I watch the Nintendo Direct and it's great cuz I'm almost watching wallto-wall stuff that I'm probably going to be interested in to some degree. Yeah. I watch something like one of the more, you know, multiplatform shows and I might discover something I never even considered I'd be interested in, but actually most of it I'm like, nah, it's not for me and that's not for me and that's not for me. So, from an audience perspective, I do find the big shows quite fun as well, but I do find the targeted ones definitely have a have a role. We've wanted to be in those big ones, right? Like it's there's a it's a prestige that goes with it
and that that the FPS game show will never deliver, right? Yeah,
but there's also it's almost a digest kind of thing is what we're saying. FPS game show digest is what it really was where you can come digest all these

updates from all these games you there's a there's a higher chance you're interested in and then move on and I think that the real question is if Warogs doesn't have a massive release on the doorstep. Does it still carry interest
or was Warog driving all that? But I think I want to do more of a festival type thing going forward and try and have like a you know some sort of paid tier because it did cost a surveillance to run but really just covering costs and then having a pre-show where a bit like an opening act where you can for free pick those indie games of teams of one to 10 people that are making FPS games and go this is what they're doing. So yeah still toying with different ideas at the moment but yeah harder than I thought. Well, everyone will be doing it. Um, I think a lot of people are. Um, War Dogs. I'll wrap up talking about Warogs. Loads and loads of players, lots and lots of interesting engagements. Probably 2 million by the time this goes out. You talked about how you might need to hire up. How fast you having to move in that regard? Are you completely sort of caught on the hoof?
Um, yeah. Our scenario where we sold

400,000 units, you know, we were making a few redundancies and just slimming up. Um for the last 6 years now actually thinking about this now out loud uh for the last 5 years we have made six years we've made redundancies every single year
um and about 20% of the company this will be the first year we haven't done it um and that's what actually happened was the first year we did it is we cut quite a few people because we'd overexpanded and we cut quite a few people um adequate performance warrants were generous severance is the kind of thing we'd we' stuck to. And then ironically, we did redundancies 2 years ago when it all kind of really started being a thing and people were panicking, but we were like, "Guys, we made less redundancies than we've ever made before. This is like it was like eight people in the end." So, I think it we're very conscious of scaling up and and up upheaving people's lives

and also getting a stain for kind of doing this. So, it's not something we want to keep doing, but we do want to lean more and more into the kind of gig economy approach of it. And what we've been doing is going, you're really good. We want you to leave your current job and come work with us. Why don't you do 12 months, 18 months remote if we all get along? Because that often doesn't happen, right? We don't like how we all work. We don't like working together. We go, we'll give you a big load of money in like a fixed offer to come and work for us in office. So you can take like you've got this trigger you can pull in our contract and be like I'd like my 25 grand now please in cash uh because I'm going to relocate to Barbados. Um, so [laughter] that price that number is going to have to go up, I think. But it's uh, yeah, so so I think we're not we're definitely needing to scale and we're definitely needing to support the codev partners who did support us throughout um, the journey, but um,

we need people and the cost of codev so high and the reliability is so low. The best way for us to do it is to hire internally. So
yeah, we're trying to rush and people who like FPS games, that's who we're looking for.
Let's talk a little bit more broadly before we have to wrap up because um you you've bought yourself out. You know, I think Hero has a capital Capital has a stake and Ever Play, which most people know as Team 17 has a big chunk, but the rest of it is owned by you and your staff. Is that that's that's right, isn't it?
Yeah.
So is it everyone's everyone's an owner in it? Is it like a big partnership? How does it all work?
Not everyone. There wasn't enough to It had to be meaningful. It's the same way we do bonuses. Not everyone gets a bonus, but when people do, they get a meaningful bonus. It's the same with our shares. We actually had to fight quite hard to get a bigger option pool and take it out of like some of the founders packages because it was uh unusual to have such a big one. But I think the whole vision is when the game does well, you do well. And I think if we're going to be a company who says we do crunch,

then we have to also say but you get something for it. Especially recently, we've been saying we need to be that like the Lannisters and pay up at this point. We want people to know that like those people who do work hard like that you do get that return and it is lifechanging. So, um it's quite a controversial stance for us to have, but we there's numerous people who worked at Bulkhead bought houses with cash they've got. And this time around, I'm going to be really excited to see those juniors who've been with us for 2 years, 3 years who are going to get money again to buy a house or at least a down payment. And what we actually find is we have to coach them with this is not financial advice, but please don't spend all your money on takeaway and energy drinks. So, we have a new kind of responsibility to our younger staff who are making good money um and usually often money we haven't seen before.
I'm interested. You've brought up crunch twice now. What does that actually look like if because because it can mean different things to different people? I

I know somebody who's a much younger person that I know who started in game development and him crunch was like occasionally having to stay a couple of hours and I'm like that that that that that sounds like you're on deadline. I don't think that's it's quite the same thing. But everyone has different different views on one of those.
It it generally it depends what age you are is what we're seeing. Um the older, you know, the older guys are like, "This isn't crunch. This is like mild overtime." But um to do that, we have to be very conscious and supportive of our own staff and try and coach them to know when when is enough, when it's not enough. And what's quite frustrating is I find British h our laws quite restrictive to wanting to do better things. The 4-day work week, for example, was very restrictive. we had to get around laws to make the 48 work week possible. And I think when we try and do something a bit different again, we hit blockages. But in terms of defining what it is, I always use the analogy of life

being a balancing act. And sometimes, you know, if you ask someone to mimic balancing, they will put two hands out like like they're on a tight rope kind of thing. But really, it's probably more like this. And for the last 3 months, War Dogs has been more important than a lot of their family lives. It has been because that's what pays the money for them. But now Bulkhead and me have to acknowledge that it needs to go the other way. So for example, everyone's pushing us to get console out earlier and we've just said no, you don't understand like that's not how it's going to work. We can't we can't push them more. We're not doing that. It's going to release in 2028 when we say it's going to release. So, for me, it's about balance and helping people and making sure that they have a company where they know they can say, "I'm tapping out and not feel like they're going to get fired for tapping out." Is that not because you're talking about, you know, trying to bring people in and I appreciate you're up front and you're transparent about it. You know, this is what's expected of you at this company.

But I always think about as the industry gets older, right? And and people who make games get older. I have so much less. I when I was starting off in games journalism, nobody made me do it. I want to be clear. know I was never working anywhere that that sort of told me I had to work extra hours but I did um and I did a lot. I physically can't anymore. I mean I I do move my hours around and stuff but I have far less ability to do it now that I've got children and there certain level of expectations that for me it sounds like all sorts of different how difficult that is.
Yeah it's getting harder right the average age is 33 in the company so it's getting harder and harder to do but that again just means we have to make an adjustment. So for instance, we once tried to do paternity leave and give people 10 weeks paternity and it was a disaster because they took the 10 weeks as they should, but their partners when it got to week 11 could not handle them leaving. They couldn't handle the fact that they're on their own with a kid now and it was super consistent. So we went the other way. We went two weeks paternity, the bare minimum and then we and then what we said was the third week

you come back half day, just the morning and I don't care if you do no work. you're training your partner how to look after their first child together and you're building a routine. And then the third week it was like you do uh full days for two of the days, whatever. And then what we say is we're going to give you three weeks to use as paternity weeks across the entire year for the first year. Cuz as you know, the first two weeks are actually kind of easy for a lot of people. For some people it's it's a lot of sleep.
Yeah. It it you get you get it gets a lot harder later. So, and that again like do you know what I'll be honest I think you can interpret that in HR or as other people being given more holiday than others who are not in the same position. So you can actually go that's not fair but we're just like sue us at this point like this is ridiculous. So trying to look at it in different ways and we talk about
you've yeah come you've always done this Joe you when because obviously we you took part in best place to work awards when I launched that um many many years

ago and from the 4-day working week was your effort to sort of go hey we're introducing this we're trying this even back then I remember from your entries it was like there's a lot of um really thinking about [laughter] this and coming up with alternative ways of trying to you know you uh approach things just like example there around paternity
I think that's what one day I'll write a book about this when we're [snorts] all doomed. But the 4 day work week being it was never about working 4 days a week. It was always about working differently. Um and the snazzy title was 4 week 4 day work week. But really it was like if we had we had a great idea we really liked of like look in the summers we work in office. In the winters we work from home and having that seasonal flip of like it's always dark, you never get the sunlight, you're spending time in traffic, it's miserable, just work from home, you get to see daylight a bit more. But that doesn't work for kids in their bedroom. So I think just doing something differently and accepting that challenge and to credit the staff when we we would like playing with their lives going change the amount of time you're doing

something and going okay we're going to work these hours now that was really hard but it took the the two-way relationship of a company and to for that to work the staff have to work with the company as well but to your question before um a lot of people that may have an issue with crunch rightly so I stand, you know, I understand that issue. I I don't want to say we are like we always try and avoid it, right? But we don't hide that this is going to happen at some point. Um they often don't make it in the door because we want to be known for that. Like this is a place you come to work hard. If you care about the work you're making and the the result of what you make here, this is a place to work. You'll feel really valued. If you don't, you will feel slaved driven. And it's it's a it's a constant two and fro with that. But we will check people's socials and if you're constantly tweeting anti-crunch meing messaging, [clears throat] this should never ever be a thing. This

could never we we know that and we're like, look, you're not going to be happy here. So, we're not going to
we're not going to go with you. I think it's interesting you brought up I think in another interview how when you told staff in December that look or maybe it was December I can't remember exactly what it was look but there might be some redundancies you were all at risk of redundancy and nobody leaked that.
Yep. That was a that was a good one. We said you if you leak it will change the whole dynamics of our deal that we're working on with Hero and 10 team 17 and all these guys. So we we we can't leak it. And um what was more annoying was we said like we're going to do absolutely everything to protect everyone's jobs here guys. That's what we're doing. Like we we've got it, but we can't guarantee anything. So if you have a job, go look for a job. Like if you've got an offer, I'm telling you to take it. Accept it. We know hard feelings. Like please do it. And um what happened was the whole team went, "Joe, we've got you back. You can do this." And I'm there like I can't do

this. Take the job. like I'm telling you we're going down. It's like a Titanic sinking and they're like it's okay. We'll fix it. Don't worry. We trust you. Like it was uh a great team moment and they stuck together. But if we hadn't pulled it off, I would have been like, "Guys, please." [laughter] So,
okay.
Um you've stopped the 4 day work weeks now though, isn't it? Is that's uh you had to take a
We've always been clear that it doesn't make you more productive. We've never ever said it makes you more productive. It makes you shock horror 20% left productive. But um I think we've always got an ambition to go back to doing something else. So we the staff today we told them they've got the entire December off right. Oh nice.
But then someone tried to book every Friday off between now and December and we said no way you are soul like let's let's balance this. So um you know we we're always trying to do something a bit different but the like at bulkhead you have the standard holidays like 20 days statutory but you never no one's

ever had 20 days holiday. They've always had more.
So [clears throat] yeah it's it's a weird trying to work within the law and provide a good service to people in a law that's designed to stop bad people. It makes quite restrictive difficult. Um, ask some other questions related to that. Is is you have you have is do you have like a I read something about a Netflix crew. Is that thing still happening?
Yeah. Yeah. We've had a Netflix. It's not Netflix. It's a Netflix approved camera setup thing. They've been following us for four years now.
Oh wow. We always call talk about ourselves as Bulkit is an entertainment company that makes video games.
Mhm.
And the video game is a vehicle for us to make entertainment and money kind of thing. Um, so yes, we make money on our game sales, but we need to keep people interested in us. So again, it's not necessarily transparent in that we're not showing people everything. Um, but everything's on camera at least, so we can choose what to show them. So for example, we had servers go down on our launch day, the entire thing. We had two

cameramen in the in the whole thing just all night for like eight hours of filming and then we cut it together and released it 24 hours later, I think. And now we're deciding whether we go with some conversations with those bigger platforms. But ultimately we think we have more power and control if we do it via this new YouTube Premier system it's got.
Mhm.
But it's really interesting if nothing else I think and you'll just see like
it just is hard work.
You can't make Warogs without hard work.
There was talk about you being involved in the Hell Let Loose series. has that I mean it sounds like you've been quite busy with Warogs, but has that come to pass?
Yeah, it's it's no secret that we were working with Team 17 um and they have a big FPS game and we love World War II FPS games. So, we don't have any confirmation right now because we're only so many people, but um wherever we can be involved in working on a cool FPS game, we will be. So, we're talking

about it, but it's not like a this is happening thing. And um yeah, just I'm always down for more Hell It Loose. So
I was surprised Hell Loose and the Wardogs are so close together. I was particularly from the same publisher. That that was a bit of a um Yeah, I was Yeah. Anyway,
I think there's always slips and you know, date slips and then eventually they end up in the same window and you know at a certain point you got to release them. So yeah,
but also you said earlier about competition and I think that these a lot of these players buy all these games and move between them.
Oh yeah. I think it's kind of nice to see it cuz I don't think the UK has necessarily been known for shooters. It's not entirely true.
We're trying to fix it. We're trying to fix it.
Well, if you go back to Golden Eye, I guess, and Rare and then sort of time spplitters and then the bit of, you know, here and there and Black and But like certainly not recent, but then there's you and then there's the Hell Blues team. I've forgotten their names for a second there. And um Battlefield 6 been made in Criterion. I know it's part they're not the lead studio on it, but it seems like a little bit of a

I think for us like that's one of our
that's our advantage, right? Is you can make we also work on PUBG, right? We have a PUBG team. We're doing some stuff there. The couple of times we've gone to hire someone and they've gone we watch the dream game. We're like this guy's going to be awesome on Warog's going to really help us out. He goes, "Oh, my dream game is work on PUBG." And we're like, "God's sake, this is going to happen. Put him on a PUBG team." So yeah, like we trying to be the place to go and work if you want to work on an FPS game. Joe, I had that when I was on GI. They invite someone in to do an interview and I'd love working for Eurogamer. I'm like, ah. [laughter]
Yeah.
Ah, balls.
Yeah, it go eventually.
I've taken up too much of your time, so I'm going to ask my question I always end with, which I know you're in the middle of of sort of, you know, this huge launch and dealing with all these players, all this feedback and all this noise, but where would you like to be in five years?
It's a good question. I think the easiest answer is I want to be making games with my friends still. That's why our thing works is we've been

friends for 12 years since we left uni and made a company. I want to be making games with my friends. New friends come in, some friends leave. But that's what I'd like to be doing. And within that really what we're trying to do is um this hard work period has made us a lot of our own independent money that we can choose what to do with. we can choose how hard to work and that's what the staff really got behind after years of being owned by different people. The ability to say we don't want to work in that on that I think is a really powerful thing will only make us make better games. But being able to spend more time with our families and then make games with our friends feels like a dream come true to us. Well Joe, uh it certainly seems like it's been a battle, but congratulations on the launch of War Dogs. I'll be watching it, of course, as the numbers inevitably go up and down and do all that thing where the the emotional roller coaster of running an online shooter game.
Yeah. And I'll still be listening to your your podcast, so please keep keep going with it.
Yeah. I like the fact you mow the lawn

every week.
Yeah. [laughter]
Well, there's a lot to digest in there. Well, that's it from us for the Game Business Show. I will be back with more news, analysis, insight, and interviews in the days and weeks ahead. You can find all our stuff on the game.com. Also, you can sign up to our newsletter there to make sure you never miss an episode. But that's it from us today. Until next time, thank you for tuning in.