Wardogs CEO Joe Brammer Responds to Backlash After Saying He Won’t Hire People Who “Constantly Tweet Anti-Crunch Messaging”

Key Takeaways:

• Wardogs and Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer sparked massive backlash after revealing he screens applicants’ social media for anti-crunch posts
• Brammer clarified in a new statement that crunch at Bulkhead is not mandatory, calling PC Gamer’s use of the word “manufactured”
• He described a specific June 2026 crunch instance — 2 extra hours a day, 4 days a week, for 16 working days — which he says was optional
• The social media screening practice has raised flags under UK employment and data protection law, with Brammer saying it was “informal” conversation about studio culture
• Bulkhead ran a 4-day work week for 2 years and has 80% of its shares owned by 50% of staff
• Wardogs has sold 2 million copies in its first five days on Steam Early Access

So Wardogs just had one of the most explosive indie FPS launches in recent memory — 2 million copies sold in under five days — and instead of just riding that high, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer found himself in the middle of a firestorm over something he said in a podcast. And honestly? It’s a lot more nuanced than most of the headlines are making it out to be. Let’s actually dig into what went down.

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What Did Joe Brammer Actually Say?

It all kicked off after Brammer appeared on The Game Business with host Chris Dring, where he got pretty candid about how Bulkhead operates. The moment that set off the internet was when he talked about crunch — something that, let’s be real, most studios do but rarely admit to publicly.

Brammer was upfront about it: he said people who have a fundamental problem with crunch “often don’t make it in the door” at Bulkhead. But the real quote that blew up was this one about the studio’s hiring process:

“We will check people’s socials, and if you’re constantly tweeting anti-crunch messaging: ‘This should never ever be a thing’ — we know that and go, ‘Look, you’re not going to be happy here, so we’re not going to go with you.'”

I’m not going to get into a public debate about this, or any other of these out of context articles. But here are the facts.

– No information says mandatory, they made this up

– 80% of the shares in Bulkhead are owned by 50% of the staff

– For 50% of development we ran a 4… https://t.co/fTX2feWCyC

— Joe Brammer (@Brammflakes) September 16, 2026

He also said something earlier in the same interview that didn’t get quite as much attention but is arguably more directly pointed:

“People know what I believe. They know I don’t believe in work from home for making video games. They know I expect people to crunch. I own that. I don’t try and hide it.”

Combine those two quotes and you can see why gaming Twitter lost its mind within about 12 hours.

The Backlash — And Brammer’s First Response

Once the PC Gamer article dropped using the word “mandatory” to describe crunch at Bulkhead, Brammer immediately pushed back on X, saying that characterization was completely made up. He listed out what he sees as the studio’s actual working conditions:

• 80% of Bulkhead’s shares are owned by 50% of the staff
• The studio ran a 4-day work week for half of Wardogs’ development
• Every staff member got the entire month of December off
• Staff bonuses tied to the success of Wardogs

“No information says mandatory, they made this up,” Brammer wrote on X. “We made a game you like and our staff will be rewarded for it accordingly.”

Fair point on the “mandatory” framing — but the issue for a lot of people wasn’t just the word. It was the broader implication that crunch is a known, expected part of working there, and that openly expressing opposition to it online could cost you the job.

Brammer’s Full Statement on Crunch — The Specifics

After the initial X response didn’t fully calm things down, Brammer put out a more detailed statement breaking down exactly what crunch actually looked like at Bulkhead during Wardogs development. And honestly, it’s a lot more specific than what you usually get from studios on this topic.

He explained that in June 2026, the team was running behind on the Wardogs beta build. To catch up, the studio asked staff to work an extra 2 hours a day, Monday through Thursday, for 4 weeks — 16 working days in total. He said the reason the extra time was specifically 2 hours was down to build times: the extra window let them squeeze in one additional build per day and get QA feedback back the same day rather than waiting for the overnight build.

He also openly acknowledged this was crunch — no sugarcoating. And critically, he said it was optional. Four people opted out, and nothing happened to them. That said, he also admitted that the social pressure inside a tight-knit team could have made opting out feel uncomfortable — which is a more honest acknowledgment than you usually see from studio heads.

Here’s the full relevant section of his statement:

“In June 2026 we were late for the Wardogs beta build. In this instance I apologised and said the only way I thought we could get the game into beta, was by working an extra 2 hours a day Monday through Thursday, for 4 weeks (16 working days total). We admitted to the staff that this was crunch; we clearly stated that we needed to crunch. It was optional; four people opted out, nothing happened to them and nothing will. But I can admit that maybe the social pressure within a very tight-knit team might make those individuals feel less than great.”

He also doubled down on what he calls Bulkhead doing things differently — pointing to the 4-day work week trial (which he described as one of the largest of its kind at the time), the staff equity structure, and December off as examples of the studio genuinely trying to balance things out. He said the founders gave up their own equity to expand the employee option pool, which is not something you hear about often.

The Social Media Screening Issue — Is It Actually Legal in the UK?

This is where things got genuinely interesting from a legal standpoint, and it’s the part of the story that kind of got buried under the crunch debate. When Brammer openly said on a podcast that Bulkhead checks applicants’ public social media for anti-crunch posts and uses that in hiring decisions, a few employment law observers flagged it as sitting in a legal grey area.

Under UK guidelines from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) — the independent body that oversees data protection and information rights — employers screening candidates’ social media should only do so where there’s a specific legal obligation or a demonstrable, significant risk. And candidates are supposed to be told about this in advance.

When Eurogamer pushed Brammer on this directly, he said he was “speaking informally” about the studio’s culture rather than laying out official recruitment policy, and that any review of publicly available information is done in line with UK employment and data protection law. He was also clear the studio doesn’t access private accounts or do anything covert.

For a lot of people, that answer probably won’t fully put the matter to rest — especially since he made the comments publicly on a podcast, not in a private internal memo. But it does seem like Bulkhead is aware of the legal lines here and is at least claiming to stay on the right side of them.

The Bigger Picture — Crunch Culture in the Games Industry

Look, crunch isn’t a Bulkhead problem. It’s a games industry problem, and has been for decades. We’ve seen it reported at CD Projekt Red during Cyberpunk 2077, at Rockstar during Red Dead Redemption 2, at Naughty Dog leading up to The Last of Us releases. The pattern is almost always the same: a combination of genuine passion for the work, management expectations, and deadline pressure creates an environment where people end up working extreme hours, often without additional pay.

What makes the Bulkhead situation different — and a little harder to just file away as straightforwardly bad — is that Brammer is at least being transparent about it. Most studios don’t say a word publicly about crunch until a report drops that exposes it. Brammer went on a podcast and just… said it. He owns a perspective that a lot of studio heads quietly hold but would never say out loud.

And he did outline what Bulkhead does to try to counterbalance it. The 4-day work week experiment is real. The staff equity structure is real. The December break is real. Brammer specifically said Wardogs’ console port won’t be rushed forward even though players want it sooner, because the team needs recovery time after the brutal launch window push — that’s a meaningful statement, even if you can be skeptical about how it plays out in practice.

But here’s the tension that never quite goes away: if crunch is “optional” but working at a tight-knit studio where your colleagues and your CEO expect it creates massive implicit pressure to comply anyway, is it really optional? That’s the question the industry has been wrestling with for years, and Bulkhead hasn’t solved it — they’ve just been more honest about it than most.

The Paternity Leave Section — One More Thing That Got People Talking

It almost got lost in the crunch debate, but Brammer also touched on paternity leave in the podcast, and it raised a few eyebrows on its own. He talked about how Bulkhead tried offering 10 weeks of paternity leave, found it didn’t work as expected (citing challenges for partners adjusting to solo parenting when leave ended), and ultimately shifted to a different model — 2 weeks minimum, then a phased return, with 3 additional weeks distributed across the first year.

He acknowledged this approach could be seen as treating some employees differently from others under UK HR law — and his response was basically “sue us.” Whether you read that as refreshing candor or recklessness probably depends a lot on where you’re coming from.

Wardogs Itself — Still Doing Really Well Despite All This

Worth noting through all of this: Wardogs has been a genuine breakout hit. Two million copies sold in five days on Steam Early Access is a massive number for an indie studio, especially one that needed around 400,000 copies just to keep the lights on. The game peaked at over 428,000 concurrent players on September 13th on Steam.

Brammer said juniors who’ve been at the studio two or three years will likely be getting enough from their shares to put a down payment on a house. That’s a remarkable thing to be able to say, and it’s part of why the Bulkhead situation is hard to reduce to a simple villain narrative.

The studio has had annual redundancies every year for the past six years, affecting roughly 20% of staff each time. Brammer said 2026 will be the first year that streak ends. Wardogs is genuinely transformative for Bulkhead, and the team has earned that.

For more on the broader gaming industry landscape, check out our coverage of Xbox Game Pass’s 2027 changes and the incoming ad-supported tier, and the recent news around Rayman Legends Retold getting delayed to December 2026.

Where Things Stand Now

Brammer has put out two responses — one on X and a more detailed statement to Eurogamer — trying to provide clarity on the crunch situation and the social media screening comments. Whether people accept that framing or not is going to depend largely on their existing views on crunch in game development.

What’s clear is that Bulkhead is a studio trying to thread an extremely difficult needle: being honest about an industry reality that most studios hide, while also presenting themselves as somewhere that genuinely looks after its people. Those two things aren’t necessarily incompatible — but they’re also not an easy sell when “we check your social media for anti-crunch posts” is out there in the public record.

It’s messy, it’s complicated, and it’s the kind of conversation the games industry genuinely needs to keep having — even if the way it started this particular round wasn’t exactly smooth.

Wardogs remains in Steam Early Access. The console version is currently slated for 2028.