Image credit: Team17

Season 2 of Wardogs , the multiplayer sandbox FPS currently blasting and/or politely driving its way through early access, introduced an un usual "social experiment" when it launched yesterday. In an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of its Lonestar faction, a.k.a the infamous Blue Team, developers Bulkhead began granting bonus XP and cash – the latter being the upgrade-focused game’s lifeblood – to Blue players alone. The hypothesis, apparently, was that more skilled players would give Lonestar a chance, helping boost its dismal winrates and perhaps improve its tarnished image.

One day in, then, how’s it going? “We were wrong. We fucked up,” says Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer in a video announcing the bonus scheme’s immediate cancellation. Ah!

It turns out that while the promise of free money and experience did indeed incentive a wave of Blue Team picks, some players – to use Brammer’s given term, "tryhards" – were earning far more lucre than Bulkhead anticipated.…