SECURITY & ENFORCEMENT

WARDOGS is developed by Bulkhead Limited ("we", "us"), and we operate its online services, accounts and anti-cheat. Cheating is not tolerated in WARDOGS, and this policy sets out what we look for, what we do about it, and what you can do if you think we’ve got it wrong. It applies to all online play, on official servers and on community servers alike.

Anti-cheat software runs alongside WARDOGS whenever you play online. It looks for indications of cheating in several ways: client and server side detection, monitoring applications running on your machine during gameplay, analysing input and gameplay patterns for anomalies, and validating that the game and your hardware haven’t been tampered with. Put simply, we look for attempts to manipulate the game, to reveal information that shouldn’t be known, or to take actions with speed or accuracy that no person can produce. Reports from other players support enforcement too.

Detection methods are researched, built and validated by us and our anti-cheat providers before we use them to enforce. The account holder is responsible for any infraction on the account. We apply penalties no matter who was playing at the time.

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Playing WARDOGS means agreeing to this policy alongside our End User Licence Agreement and Privacy Policy. Those, and our player safety page, are all available at wardogs.com/legal and from the legal menu in the game.

What isn't allowed

Do any of the following and we may suspend or ban your account:

• Using or installing cheats of any kind, including aimbots, trigger bots, wallhacks, ESP and radar tools, recoil or spread modification, and no-clip or teleport tools.

• Modifying, tampering with, patching or repackaging the game's files, executable or memory, or running tools that do so while the game is running.

• Using macros, scripts or hardware devices to automate inputs or gain an advantage that normal play doesn't allow.

• Interfering with the anti-cheat software, blocking it, spoofing what it reports, or preventing it from running.

• Deliberately exploiting bugs, glitches or unintended behaviour for advantage, including damage, movement, spawn and progression exploits.

• Win trading, deliberate throwing, boosting, and playing to farm rewards rather than to play the game.

• Buying, selling, renting or sharing accounts, and playing on an account that isn't yours.

• Evading a ban, or helping someone else to evade one, including through new accounts or spoofed hardware.

• Making, selling, distributing or advertising any of the above, whether or not you use it yourself.

• Abusing other players: harassment, threats, hate speech, sexual content involving minors, doxxing, and abusive usernames or clan tags. This applies to text and voice chat.

• Abusing the reporting system with deliberately false or coordinated reports.

How we detect it

WARDOGS has a reporting feature built into the game. Use it when you see someone cheating, exploiting or abusing other players. Reports come through to us and we review them and act on them, and a report may bring a short extract of the recent text chat from that session with it so we can see what was said. Reports are more useful than they look: they tell us where to point the detection, and a pattern of reports against the same player is evidence in its own right.

We work with third-party anti-cheat providers to do this, and they receive data from your device for that purpose. Our Privacy Policy explains what’s collected, who receives it and how long we keep it.

Some actions are automatic. If the game detects that it has been tampered with, or that cheat software is running, it will refuse to launch or refuse to let you connect. Bans are applied by us, and where a ban follows behavioural detection rather than a direct cheat detection, a member of our team reviews the evidence before we apply it.

We don’t publish the detail of how detection works, and we won’t discuss it in individual cases. Telling people how we catch them tells cheat developers how to avoid being caught.

Some anti-cheat protections depend on your system configuration. We do not currently require Secure Boot or a TPM to be enabled to play online, but we may introduce that requirement at any time if it becomes necessary to protect the game. If we do, we will say so before the requirement takes effect and the game will tell you what needs to change on your device.

Be careful what you install. Steer clear of tutorials and paid services offering unlocks, progression, cosmetics, stat boosts, modified clients or "undetected" cheats. Anything that involves altering the game’s files or your machine’s memory to obtain content or an advantage is cheating, whoever sells it and however safe they claim it is. We enforce against the account that used it, not the person who sold it.

What we do about it

We use the following enforcement actions.

Server restriction. Where you attract repeated reports on a single server, we may bar you from that server for a period. This affects that one server, not your access to the rest of the game.

Temporary suspension. Your account loses access to online play for a period. Lengths vary depending on what you did and whether you’ve done it before.

Permanent account ban. Your account permanently loses access to online play. Permanent bans apply across WARDOGS, and because our games could use the same account system, a permanent ban may also apply to other games we operate.

Hardware ban. The device is barred from online play, not just the account. Any account signing in from a banned device is blocked from playing online. Hardware bans can vary in length, and we don’t disclose the length in advance. To check whether a device is still banned, sign in on it with an account in good standing and try to connect.

We choose the action based on what happened, how deliberate it was, and your history. Cheating and tampering are the most serious things on the list above and are the most likely to result in a permanent or hardware ban with no prior warning. We can apply more than one action at once, and a permanent account ban is usually accompanied by a hardware ban.

We can also remove or reset progression, cosmetics and statistics obtained through cheating or exploits, and we can revoke leaderboard placements and competition entries.

Enforcement applies to your account and, where we apply a hardware ban, to the device. Don’t share your account, don’t lend your machine to someone who cheats, and don’t let anyone else install anything to play on it. If they get you banned, it’s still your ban.

Community servers

WARDOGS uses a server browser, and many servers are rented by players and communities from third-party hosting providers. Those servers are run by their owners, not by us.

Server admins set their own rules and can kick or ban players from their own servers for any reason. Those bans affect that server only. They aren’t our decisions, we don’t review them and we can’t overturn them. If you’ve been banned from a community server and think it was unfair, take it up with the people running it.

Our own enforcement works the other way round. A suspension, permanent ban or hardware ban applied by us blocks you from all online play, including on community servers. We may also remove a server from the browser, or withdraw our services from it, if it is used to break the rules in this policy.

Appeals

Only permanent account bans can be appealed. Server restrictions, temporary suspensions and hardware bans are final and aren’t eligible for appeal, though where a hardware ban was applied alongside a permanent account ban and we overturn that ban on appeal, we’ll lift both.

To appeal a permanent account ban, email appeal@bulkhead.com with your account name and platform. A member of our team, not an automated system, reviews every appeal. We’ll aim to respond within 30 days. We’ll tell you the outcome, but we won’t share the detection evidence or explain how the detection worked. If we overturn a ban, we restore the account and any progression that was removed with it.

Appeal decisions are final. Submitting repeat appeals for the same ban won’t get it looked at again.

Data and your rights

Enforcement involves processing personal data, including an identifier derived from your device where we apply a hardware ban. Our Privacy Policy sets out what we collect, the legal basis for it, who it’s shared with, how long we keep it, and how to exercise your rights, including your right to contest a decision made about you. If you’re in the UK or EU and you want a decision reviewed on data protection grounds rather than as a ban appeal, contact us at privacy@bulkhead.com.

Changes to this policy

We’ll update this policy as the game and the threats to it change. The date at the top tells you when it last changed.

Questions about anything here go to support@bulkhead.com.