WARDOGS Ban Wave — 185K Bans, Appeals & the RMT Crackdown

The Season 3-era ban wave is the biggest enforcement action WARDOGS has ever shipped: 185,000 accounts banned after the developers analysed 187 million hours of gameplay. If you are here because you saw a ban screen — or because a friend did — this page covers the numbers, what actually triggers bans, the false-positive history, and the one appeal route that works.

By Rowan Vale · Last updated Nov 7, 2026 · About & how we verify

The Numbers

• 185,000 accounts banned — announced in a developer video alongside the AI/ML analysis of 187M hours of gameplay.
• Nearly 4M unique players total; BULKHEAD states 4.89% of players worldwide used external mods, and 5.7% of European copies were flagged.
• Bans cover aim assist, recoil control and manipulated fire rates — and they are retroactive: old evidence counts.
• A Trust Score system is planned for 2027.

What Gets You Banned

• External mods / cheats — aim assist, recoil scripts, fire-rate manipulation.
• Exploit abuse — patch 0.11 codified it as a temporary ban plus money and XP zeroed.
• Exploit tutorials or extended farming-server stays — permanent ban.
• RMT / boosting — the developers infiltrated boosting servers: money and XP resets, permanent bans including buyers of "VIP slots", and server hosting privileges revoked.

The Official Appeal Route

1. DM the @WARDOGS Support bot in the official WARDOGS Discord — this is the route BULKHEAD points to.
2. Include your Steam ID, ban time and server ID.
3. For non-ban issues, use support.team17.com.
4. Note: Steam has a "Ban Appeals" subforum, but community reports say appeals there go unanswered — use the Discord bot.

The False-Positive History

WARDOGS has shipped false-positive bans before, and it matters for your appeal: the launch-night wave (Sep 10–11) banned innocent players — including streamers Shroud and Summit1g — and BULKHEAD reverted a large batch. If you are confident you were swept up wrongly, say so clearly in the Discord appeal and reference your play history. Family Sharing was disabled on Sep 18 specifically to stop banned players evading through shared libraries.

What the Ban Screen Shows

The ban screen shows error 1147405307 ("Your account has been banned") with a Reason (usually "Cheating") and Time Left (hours, or "Permanent"). Reinstalling or verifying files will not help — it is account-side. A second code, 1413677057, circulates in community reports and is not in the official list; if you see it alongside a ban message, treat it the same way.

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