2025 End of Year Update

Hello everyone,

Happy 2026 to all! Another year has rolled by, our fourth, and we though it worthwhile to reflect on the year that was, 2025.

Firstly, we provided several operational updates during the year, so there may be some repetition in this post. You can read our Quarter One Review here, Quarter Two Review here and our Quarter Three Review here. In addition to our quarterly updates, we also had an additional News Shorts post here.

We released four new games, and a new demo during the year. This was the most titles in one year since WDS launched with the John Tiller catalogue in November 2021. Poland ‘39 was a welcome addition to the Panzer Campaigns series, while War of the Austrian Succession continued the flow of new titles in the Musket and Pike series. One of the biggest highlights of the year was the launch of the WDS original series, Sword & Siege. The inaugural title, Crusades: Book I was followed by the Sword & Siege Demo, and subsequently the Age of Longbow Volume I. 

All started with the release of War of the Austrian Succession in January, closely followed by Crusades: Book I in March. Poland ‘39 was historically available to mark the 80^th anniversary of the end of the World War II in Europe in May, and was preceded by a week by the Sword & Siege Demo, also in May. The releases for 2025 were rounded out with the move to the Hundred Year War, with Age of Longbow Volume I released in August. The effort to deliver five new games was unrelenting, but we couldn’t be happier to bring titles that are rarely covered in computer wargames.

Who would believe it was nearly two years ago that we started our Game of the Week program! This has been a big success for us in terms of engagement with you all. It has given us a platform to highlight various titles and share further background, research, and reading. We have just started our 2026 program after the Winter Sale, and you can get Civil War Battles: Chancellorsville, this week. With over one-hundred titles we are just reaching the point where all games have been featured at least once in the Game of the Week. If you missed a title, first time round, follow our weekly posts to see if your favourite game is highlighted.

As we have done in the prior Quarterly Reviews, here is a list of the titles that were Game of the Week in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Updates and upgrades for the existing catalogue continue to be the biggest focus for the team beyond the work needed for new releases and demos. We continue to put a big emphasis on reviewing all the products and where possible standardize across all. Some series continue to be ahead of others in terms of new features, but we are committed to aligning all, where possible.

Looking at updates, by period, the Napoleonic Battles received 4.09 in January with 4.09.1 following close behind in February. As a bit of an explainer, you will usually see us release two patches in quick succession. We usually lead with a few popular titles in the first patch, in this case Campaign Waterloo and The Final Struggle Demo. This allows us to get many more players trying any changes and identifying bugs that our testing teams may have missed. These can then be corrected in the subsequent patch that updates the whole series. 4.09.2 was released in April to correct some additional issues. The first of three updates for 4.09.3 was released in October, with the second and third tranche of titles being updated here and here.

Civil War Battles rolled out version 4.05.2 in March. Versions 4.05.3 and 4.05.4 closely followed in April as well. Like the Napoleonic series, the 4.05.5 updates were broken into three tranches in August/September. These are the links to the first, second, and third posts.

With an increased focus on Musket and Pike with the release of War of the Austrian Succession at the beginning of 2025, another round of updates was made available in March. Version 4.05.1 included a range of fixes and enhancements.

Sword & Siege arrived in 2025 with the release of Crusades: Book I followed by the Sword & Siege Demo, and subsequently the Age of Longbow Volume I. Update 4.01 was released to coincide with the availability of the Demo. A further nine scenarios were included in an expansion pack for Crusades: Book I in June. These new scenarios were added to the full installer at the same time. A preview of the upcoming Age of Longbow Volume I was posted in May.

Panzer Campaigns by product count, is our largest series with thirty-two titles. With the release in May of Poland ‘39 the version number was incremented to 4.05.2. A preview article, highlighted the significant changes coming in the 4.05.2 version. Andy, our lead programmer worked tirelessly to improve the AI performance and scripting as well as adding additional features.

We went through three rounds of updates for the Panzer Campaigns/Modern Campaigns/First World War Campaigns series. 4.05.3 in June/July, 4.05.3h1 in August and a move for all series to 4.05.3h2 in September. There were multiple posts for the earlier updates.

Significantly, expansion packs and additional material was included in some of the patches. Spring Awakening ’45 had twenty-two scenarios added expanding the game to include operations around Budapest. Orel ’43 was also expanded with twenty-five new scenarios covering the Soviet operation to capture Bryansk. Mike Middleton also updated his campaign Certain Strike ‘87 for Danube Front ’85. Dani Asensio also went back and updated the AI scripts in Orel ’43 and Rumyantsev ’43 to use the latest enhancements created by Andy, these improvements were included in the latest updates.

We continue to use the Panzer Campaigns series to try new things and improve the existing games. You can expect further enhancements in the coming year.

Squad Battles saw the release of The Proud and the Few in April. Like everything, we have continually underestimated the time required to modernize these titles and the series. Being a granular simulation has required every component and value to be reviewed, and this takes time. We shared a preview of the changes coming in the Quarter Three Review here as well as well as specifics on the upcoming 4.03.4 version. To let you all see the changes in action, a beta update for Advance of the Reich was made available in November. A further update was shared in the News Shorts – December 2025 post.

In all, eighty-two of the one-hundred-and-thirteen titles have been upgraded in 2025. That is seventy-two percent of the catalogue and has required significant time and resources to handle new builds, patches, and the support to migrate you, our customer base.

Blog posts and email continue to be an important way for us to both message and interact with the community. There were one hundred and seven(!) blog posts during the year, a rate of nearly nine per month on average and higher than the ninety-six posts in 2024. Many of these posts have been linked to the addition of Game of the Week every Monday, but there were also a range of informational posts that provided further insight into game play, game design, and other interesting topics. Below is a list and links to these articles.

Our dedicated forums continue to grow as a destination, with many of the more immediate questions, and feedback being discussed and resolved there. There are now 1,600 members of the forum, up from 1,200 a year ago, and 800 in 2023. There is now over 4,000 topics compared to last years, 2,700 topics, and over 24,400 individual posts across these topics, a 50% increase on last years 16,000. Also keep in mind that you do not need to be registered to read the forum, just to post. We see many more visitors than the current registered members. We are very happy with the interaction and responsibility of all that frequent the forums. 

A few statistics for the year.

Our total orders were up by 15%, compared to 2024, which in itself was 9% up on 2023. The primary difference between the prior years, 2024 to 2023 was the increase due to the Game of the Week promotion. That was less an issue in 2025 as the Game of the Week program had run for nearly all of 2024. What moved the dial was both the increased number of new titles, four vs the two in 2024, as well as the introduction of a new series in Sword & Siege. We were pleasantly surprised with the reception both Crusades: Book I and Age of Longbow Volume I received, and it justified both the time and additional cost to publish them. You all may not be aware, but there is significant cost for unit artwork in these titles, compared to the twentieth century series, due to the uniqueness of each period. Mike Prucha’s Poland ‘39 was also heavily anticipated and did very well. We are not aware of any other title that covers the Polish campaign at the scale shown in Panzer Campaigns.

Our average order value also grew 7% year on year, but at a slightly higher rate than 2024 where it was up 6%. We believe this growth continues as we have seen more people taking advantage of the bulk discount that is available when you spend $200 or more, particularly during our sales.

We saw our site visits (sessions) were up by 9%, with growth in most months. This followed a large 34% increase in 2024 and 29% increase in 2023. Of interest, many of the additional visits were tied to emails & blog posts. With a higher number of blog posts, people visited more often, and tended to spend longer on-site generally. Sessions are a way of measuring both the number of visits and time spent on a website, and we’re pleased to see this number still growing strongly. Though the number of visits is slowing, that is to be expected as our prior year base values have grown significantly. We are looking at ways to continue to optimise our website and information we share, so more people find our titles quicker.

An important, related statistic is the returning customer rate. This measures the number of customers who bought twice or more in a year. In 2024, 71% of our customers bought from us more than once and the rate was higher for first time buyers. This year, the returning customer rate was down slightly at 69% but is still an exceptional metric. New customer orders grew by 24% over 2024 and returning customer orders by 11%. New customers are always a good indication of how well you are reaching people who didn’t previously know about your products.

Looking at which series were the most popular.

Panzer Campaigns led with 26% of all sales followed by Napoleonic Battles (14%) and Civil War Battles (12%). Sword & Siege as a new entrant was 10% followed by Squad Battles and Musket and Pike at 8% each. Keep in mind that four of the first five series have the most individual titles compared to the other series, so have a range advantage (Sword and Siege being the exception here).

A fairer view is when the series volume is divided by the number of titles in a series to get an average per title volume. Comparing that to the average volume overall shows which series is above or below the average. In the table below the average volume overall is equal to 100%. Anything over 100% means that the total units per title is higher. This resulted in a very different mix.

Sword & Siege was our best performing series per title, buoyed by being completely new offerings in 2025. The 408% means that we sold each title in 2025 at a rate 4x higher than the average across the current 113 titles. Panzer Battles, at 170%, like prior years performed very well on a per title basis, despite it being way too long since a new title was released. Musket and Pike continued its ‘renaissance’, with multiple new titles over the last two years as well as the Vienna 1683 Demo helping overall. Modern Air Power made the list based upon the number of downloads of the Modern Air Power Demo. Modern Campaigns performed well, on the back of the Quang Tri ’72 Demo and ongoing interest in Danube Front ’85. Napoleonic Battles was, unlike the other series up due to an increase in paid titles. Inclusion in the Game of the Week program saw some very solid uptake in purchases, exactly the purpose of that promotion.

At a product level, demos took eight of the top ten downloads with the Sword & Siege Demo taking the top spot followed by Panzer Campaigns: Mius ’43. Poland ‘39 and Crusades: Book I were the two paid titles in the top ten.

Of the top five paid titles, the top four were the new 2025 titles, rounded out with Panzer Campaigns: Spring Awakening ‘45, a 2024 release.

These statistics underline the strength of the business and the continued engagement and support from you, our customers. We know we are a discretionary expense at a time of rising cost of living and are very grateful for all the support.

We are getting very excited about our release schedule for 2026.

We announced the next Sword & Siege game, Crusades: Book II in our fourth anniversary post in November. This is another big title, on a fascinating subject. Covering from the end of the Second Crusade, through both the Third and Fourth crusades, there is content aplenty. The blog post that previewed this title gives a great background to understand what happened and what will be in the title.

There are currently over seventy-five scenarios, including variants planned for inclusion in the game.

Here are some additional screenshots:

In what is expected to be one of the most anticipated games from WDS so far, we hope to release the new Musket and Pike title, American Revolutionary War before the 250^th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in July. This new game goes well beyond the now discontinued Early American War, 1776 title. Utilising our enhanced Musket and Pike engine, we cover a broader range of engagements than were in the older title. The reveal blog post covers all the current engagements, engine changes as well as the application of the new Burden of Command graphics and the Don Troiani - https://dontroiani.com/ ‘Soldier Study’ images for our unit pictures. We hope you are all as excited about this title as we are.

Here are some additional screenshots: 

With the excitement around Crusades: Book II and American Revolutionary War, we would like to announce a third title that we expect to release in the first half of the year. If we manage our planned timelines, this will match our efforts in the first half of 2025.

The third title is Dani Asensio’s, Panzer Campaigns: Donbas ’43.

Dani is the (prolific) developer of Panzer Campaigns: Rumyantsev ’43, Orel ’43 and Smolensk ‘43. These titles are known for their depth of research, variant scenarios, and detailed order of battles. Panzer Campaigns: Donbas ’43 is a perfect addition to his ‘summer of 1943’ series.

We expect Donbas to ship with ninety (!) scenarios, including the full 398-turn campaign and its variants. The master map is large with over two-hundred thousand hexes and follows the Severnyy Donets river from just south of Kharkov to Voroshilovgrad. The Black Sea from the north of Crimea through to Rostov-na-Donu and the Northern Kuban, complete the map.

The major campaigns included are:

• The Izyum-Barvenkovo Offensive starting on July 17^th, 1943.
• The Mius Front from the same date, July 17^th, 1943.
• The Donbas Strategic Offensive Operation beginning on August 16^th, 1943.
• The Mius Front from August 18^th, 1943.
• The Donbas Strategic Offensive Operation, Second Phase starting on September 1^st, 1943.

There are three orders of battle (OOB) covering the various operations and time periods. The nations included are the Germans, Soviets, and the return of the Rumanians. The Germans can be further be segmented into Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and SS. While the Soviets have the standard Russians and Guards units. Dani has spent a lot of time on the OOBs, including information provided by the community that has helped enhance his previous releases.

For those that were wondering, The Mius Front campaign for July 17th, 1943, is a larger, much updated version of the scenario included in the Panzer Campaigns: Mius ’43 Demo.

There will be additional changes to the game engine that will be rolled out to the other titles, post Donbas ’43 release. This includes additional AI enhancements, further UI tweaks and more.

The game is currently deep in testing and will be released when done.

Here are a few work-in-progress screenshots:

Other Updates

We continue to have a lot of projects covering both new titles and upgrades to the existing catalogue. Here is a summary of what we are currently working on that may make an appearance this year.

Squad Battles. We mentioned in recent blog posts that we are making good progress on implementing the new 3D graphics into the six titles that are version 4.03 or higher. Once completed we will be moving back to the older 4.00 titles to start their upgrade journey. As mentioned in our Quarter Three Review, Falklands was our test base for a range of new changes and that will be the next title updated. Beyond that we are probably looking at the Vietnam series as the three related titles will use very similar graphics.

Strategic War. The range of code changes mentioned in the past have been completed. We are now looking to work through the scenarios in the existing titles to ensure they work with the latest changes. There is a lot to review here, and we want to work through it systematically. Dependent on what is found, we will probably include the current scenarios and ‘enhanced’ versions using the new features, if applicable. We really want to get these wrapped up and out to you all this year.

Panzer Battles. As shown with the  ‘volume per title’ analysis, Panzer Battles continues to be a very popular series. We have reviewed where we are with Panzer Battles Moscow and decided to recombine it back into the original title, rather than the split between Typhoon and Counterattack. This gives us over half the scenarios needed for release, now. We are looking to get the remainder done and have teams actively working on additional scenarios. There are a huge number of potential campaigns for this battle, and we really believe a second title will be warranted after the first. That is why we are comfortable recombining the previously mentioned titles.

Finally, some comments about the WDS Team.

This year has seen us continue to benefit from a group of great people.

Our programming team, Andy, Henrik, and Carlos continue to deliver new features, and help us see what is possible in the future. Their efforts in user interface, AI improvements as well as data management is providing us with opportunities that were not there eighteen months ago. Just don’t ask them about gate ownership during sieges or column of march nuances!

The biggest investment made this year has been in our graphics team and art resources. Mark joined us, along with Manuel and Renan. Nick F, and Frank continue to provide significant upgrades to our pre-twentieth century titles. We have also purchased graphical assets that should allow us to complete games more quickly.

We have new tools for map creation and both Mike, and Nick B have been generating maps at a speed that is a fraction of the old methodology. Bill continues to complete his Eastern Front opus, which will underpin numerous eastern titles. Dave is doing the same for the Western Front.   

Thomas has joined as our community manager and blog post creator extraordinaire. We highlighted some of his work in the recent News Shorts – December 2025 post. Andrew, Alex, and Gary are also providing regular historical research, information, and posts.

There are too many to name, but there is an army of very dedicated individuals that either create and lead projects or help with the improvement of existing titles or series. These people are the heart and soul of WDS, and their work output, energy and enthusiasm is a godsend. These people ensure you get the games you want.

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention the unsung heroes, our support and testing teams. We pride ourselves on personalising any interaction with WDS and ensuring questions are answered as quickly as possible. Our testing team are there to ensure you get the best possible product, and when there are issues, help with the resolution. Support and testing are one of the reasons so many of you come back to buy from us again.

From Rich and I, thank you Team WDS!

We have started our fifth year of operations! When we took over the Tiller catalogue, we knew it was a big responsibility, but we thought that the games deserved to live on. What was uncertain was whether there was still a market for this niche offering. You have resoundingly confirmed that.

We readily acknowledge that we couldn’t do it without you all. Your enthusiasm to support us and share your feedback has helped shape us into the company we are today.

Thank you again, Happy New Year, and look forward to 2026 it’s going to be a big one!