The launch of a new live season is hard, and subtle changes to a game can have massive consequences when players get their hands on it. Wardogs proved this true with the launch of its second season this week, as players were able to unlock tanks on day one.

The good news (or bad, depending on whether you feel you’ve missed out on a head start) is that this exploit has already been fixed. Players could drive just outside of their HQ, drop off pallets, and return to base to earn a sizable amount of XP. This, paired with faster XP gains for the Driver role allowed people to ascend rapidly through the Driver progression track and unlock tanks.

This was a problem, as unlocking anti-tank equipment via other progression paths took far longer than the measly few hours of dedicated grinding these Driver XP exploiters sat through, meaning the vast majority of players were unprepared to deal with the tanks – unless they made use of the exploit themselves and got their own.

In a post made to the Wardogs Discord, Bulkhead co-founder Howard Philpott said: “We’re holding our hands up and we got a few things wrong”. He went on to explain that a backend update was being pushed through that fixes a progression bug for the driver XP path, stomps out that aforementioned exploit, and also removes the Lonestar (blue team) cash and XP bonuses.

In a video released alongside the Discord, post technical designer Mark Tadros explained that players who were using the exploit “extremely” would be receiving 24 hour bans, though the number of players actually guilty of this falls below the 1,000 mark. Everyone else who partook in the practice, to a less absurd degree, appears to have been left alone.

It’s the right call, and in all honestly a tragic result for what otherwise looked to be a direct, laser-targeted set of changes meant to take down some of Wardogs’ trickier problems. In the first season, Driver XP was among the most time-consuming to get, so a change to improve that was a great idea. Likewise, the now-removed XP and cash bonus provided to the blue team was a smart solution to that faction, which struggled to win games back in season one.

Even so, the reaction in the community has been mixed. Some, understandably, are a little sad they missed out on the good XP gains. Others noted that this all happened while they were at work – the woe of the employed gaming enthusiast.

Nonetheless, Wardogs continues to prove its merit as a popular and enticing military FPS – and one of the breakout successes of the year. In our early access Wardogs review, we said the game’s mix of competitive shooters’ best bits with something entirely of its own made it “a brilliantly refreshing take on the genre”.