Deadlock (video game)

Developer

Valve^[1]

Publisher

Valve^[1]

Genre

Third-person hero shooter and MOBA, six against six^[2]

Platform

PC, through Steam (system requirements listed as TBD)^[1]

Status

Invite-only playtest in early development^[1]

Release date

To be announced^[1]

Revealed

Aug 23, 2024^[3][4]

Heroes

44^[28]

Peak concurrent players

303,347 on Oct 16, 2026^[23]

Overview

Deadlock is a multiplayer game from Valve that combines a third-person shooter with the structure of a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA): two teams of six heroes fight along lanes between their bases and collect a currency called souls to level up and buy items.^[2] Each team serves a godlike Patron, and a team wins by pushing into the enemy base and destroying the rival Patron.^[2] The game is set in an occult version of New York that Valve calls the Cursed Apple.^[19] Valve's Steam page says the game is still in early development "with lots of temporary art and experimental gameplay" and that access is limited to friend invites from existing playtesters.^[1] It cannot be bought or found through Steam search, and its planned release date is listed as "To be announced" as of Nov 7, 2026.^[1][23]

6:55 A match as Rat King on the City Never Sleeps map Third-person play as the hero Rat King, recorded in October 2026: a fight among the troopers, a ride along a zipline and fights through the city's buildings.

Origins and reveal

CGMagazine reported in May 2024 that Deadlock had previously been known under the codename Neon Prime, and PCGamesN later described the game as built from the remains of that earlier Valve experiment.^[5][2] Leaked screenshots from a closed playtest appeared that May, when the Valve-focused account Gabe Follower posted them on X.^[5] Playtesters were told not to discuss the game, yet by August 2024 hundreds of gameplay videos were online and the playtest had passed 44,000 concurrent players while Valve still had not acknowledged it.^[3]

Valve revealed Deadlock on Aug 23, 2024, with a bare Steam store page that carried a teaser video and low-resolution key art.^[3] A Valve developer known as Yoshi announced that the rules against public conversation were lifted so that players could stream and discuss the game, but that it would remain invite-only and in an early stage of development.^[4][3] Inviting a friend became an option in the game's own menu, replacing an earlier process that required the friend's Steam profile and email address.^[6] Interest climbed quickly: SteamDB recorded 171,490 concurrent players on Sep 2, 2024, as Shacknews reported.^[7] PCGamesN names Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse, co-founders of the Risk of Rain studio Hopoo Games, among the developers, and describes Yoshi as the team member who speaks most often to players.^[2]

1:00 A full bot match from the 2024 build Gameplay IGN recorded a week after the reveal, showing the game as it looked in its 2024 build.

Gameplay

A standard match pits two teams of six against each other on one symmetrical map.^[2] Waves of computer-controlled troopers march down each lane, and killing them, neutral monsters and enemy heroes yields souls, which raise a hero's level and pay for items.^[2][12] Since February 2025 a player near a dying trooper earns its souls without having to land the last hit, but the soul orb it drops can still be shot by either side, which lets players deny souls to opponents.^[12][2] Each lane is protected by defensive structures, and the base behind them holds the Patron.^[2]

2:03 GameSpot explains lanes and troopers GameSpot's 2024 explainer describes the goal of destroying the enemy base, the lanes, which then numbered four, and the waves of troopers that fight along them.

Shops placed around the map sell equipment with passive bonuses and active effects, so a hero's build changes from match to match.^[2] Movement is central to the game: heroes slide, dash, jump in midair and jump off walls within the limits of a stamina meter, and ride ziplines and jump pads around the city.^[2] Valve's first anti-cheat system, added in September 2024, let the opposing team choose whether a detected cheater was banned at once or turned into a frog for the rest of the match and banned afterward.^[8]

6:12 Abilities, stamina and parries The creator Macro explains that every hero has three abilities and an ultimate, a stamina bar for dashes and double jumps, and a melee attack that opponents can parry.

Modes and ranked play

Old Gods, New Blood added Street Brawl in January 2026, a faster mode in which teams of four play a best-of-five series.^[15][2] PC Gamer described its matches as lasting 15 minutes at most, with no farming: before each round a player picks three items out of nine and cannot buy more until the round ends.^[17] The Matchmaking Update of Jul 30, 2026 split play into an unranked Standard Mode and a Ranked Mode with seasons and named ranks from Initiate to Eternus.^[18] To queue for Ranked, a player needs 60 wins in Standard Mode, may pick only heroes they have won at least 15 games with, and needs at least three such heroes.^[18] The first ranked season ended on Nov 5, 2026, and Beta Season 2 runs from that day until Mar 11, 2027.^[26]

Heroes and voting

Valve has grown the roster in batches.^[11][13] In October 2024 it opened Hero Labs, an experimental matchmaking mode with six in-progress heroes.^[9] Holliday, Vyper, Calico and The Magnificent Sinclair joined regular matchmaking on Jan 17, 2025, when Valve called expanding the roster one of its major goals for that year and warned that some of them carried more temporary art than usual.^[11] With the Six New Heroes update of Aug 18, 2025, Valve began releasing new heroes one every other day, with players voting on the order in the Hideout, a new pre-game lobby that replaced the old menu screen.^[13] The same post said work on Hero Labs had been paused.^[13]

Nearly 6 million votes were cast in that first round.^[14] The Old Gods, New Blood batch of early 2026 drew 60,776,963 votes, and the City Never Sleeps batch of October 2026 drew over 110 million.^[16][24] Nurse Harrow, released on Oct 20, 2026, was the last hero of that batch, which brought the roster to 44.^[24][28]

9:16 How hero builds change a role Macro explains that most heroes can be built as a tank, an assassin or a support, and counts 44 heroes to choose from.

Updates

Valve has rebuilt large parts of Deadlock in public.^[2] Through 2024 it released major patches about every two weeks, and on Jan 8, 2025 a developer announced that major patches would no longer follow a fixed schedule.^[10] The Map Rework Update of Feb 25, 2025 redesigned the map around three lanes instead of four, and PCGamesN reports that Valve found four lanes spread teams too thin.^[12][2] Old Gods, New Blood, on Jan 22, 2026, overhauled the Patrons and the bases, added Street Brawl and revamped the postgame screen.^[15] City Never Sleeps, on Sep 29, 2026, brought what Valve called a massive visual update to the map and its neutral monsters, six new heroes, HUD changes and accessibility options.^[19] PCGamesN describes the Soul Urn, a carried bonus objective, as reworked several times until it became two separate mechanics.^[2]

2:32 Three lanes, and the game after them Macro explains that each player is assigned to one of three lanes, notes that there used to be four, and describes how play spreads across the map once the Guardians fall.

Release status

As of Nov 7, 2026, Deadlock has no release date.^[1] In a development note published with City Never Sleeps, Valve thanked players for their support "despite the game being unfinished" and said it had put the game in players' hands early because building a multiplayer game is "very hard and risky".^[19] The note named progression and hero and Hideout customization as features Valve wanted to adjust with feedback before full release, and called large item redesigns and alternate game modes more speculative.^[19] It said the Mid-Boss, Guardians and Walkers would be the focus of upcoming updates and that hero remodels would come gradually; an Oct 30, 2026 update then enlarged the Mid-Boss's area and gave it more cover.^[19][25]

2:30 Valve's note on what comes before release The creator Goopy reads and discusses the part of Valve's Sep 29, 2026 note about progression and customization being built before full release.

PC Gamer read the note as no sign of an imminent public release, and reported datamined concept art for a Wardrobe that shows heroes in alternative outfits.^[20] It also wrote that the new modes could include a rumored player-versus-environment mode made by former Risk of Rain developers.^[20] Beebom estimated a release in late 2027 or early 2028, its own estimate rather than anything Valve has announced.^[21]

Player numbers

Deadlock's audience grew sharply with the City Never Sleeps heroes.^[22][23] On Oct 9, 2026, the day the hero Solomon was released, it reached 262,145 concurrent players on Steam, passing the all-time peak of Valve's own Team Fortress 2, 253,997, according to PC Gamer's reading of SteamDB.^[22] After Violet's release on Oct 16, 2026 it reached 303,347, which Destructoid reported made it the fourth most played game on Steam at that moment, ahead of games including Wardogs.^[23] PC Gamer remarked that Valve had been able to experiment on the game for years "without making a single cent off of it directly".^[22] Because the game is unreleased, it cannot be bought on the Steam store, and concurrent player counts are the main public measure of its size.^[1][23]

Criticism and controversy

PC Gamer argued that the polish of Old Gods, New Blood made it hard to call Deadlock unfinished by the standards of early access games, while Valve's own note continued to describe it as unfinished.^[20][19] Valve has said its approach lowers the risk of building a multiplayer game by letting players shape it from an early state.^[19]

Mods became a point of dispute in April 2026, when a modder offered an unofficial skin for the hero Warden for $20 and lowered the price to $10 after criticism.^[27] Critics objected that the skin reworked a Valve-owned character and was sold for a free game from which Valve itself earned nothing, while Mein-MMO noted that mods are generally allowed in Deadlock if they give no gameplay advantage; Valve had not commented when it reported the dispute.^[27] At the time the game itself offered no way to spend money.^[27]

Timeline

1. 2024-05 Leaked screenshots from Valve's closed playtest appear online.^[5]
2. 2024-08-23 Valve reveals Deadlock, opens its Steam page and lifts the playtest's rules against public discussion.^[3][4]
3. 2024-09-02 The playtest peaks at 171,490 concurrent players.^[7]
4. 2024-10-24 Hero Labs opens with six in-progress heroes.^[9]
5. 2025-01-08 Valve drops its fixed schedule for major patches.^[10]
6. 2025-01-17 Holliday, Vyper, Calico and The Magnificent Sinclair join regular matchmaking.^[11]
7. 2025-02-25 The Map Rework Update moves the map from four lanes to three.^[12]
8. 2025-08-18 Six New Heroes introduces the Hideout and hero voting.^[13]
9. 2026-01-22 Old Gods, New Blood overhauls the Patrons and bases and adds Street Brawl.^[15]
10. 2026-07-30 The Matchmaking Update adds separate Standard and Ranked modes.^[18]
11. 2026-09-29 City Never Sleeps reworks the look of the map, and Valve publishes a note on its development plans.^[19]
12. 2026-10-16 Deadlock reaches its peak of 303,347 concurrent players.^[23]
13. 2026-10-20 Nurse Harrow, the last of the City Never Sleeps heroes, brings the roster to 44.^[24][28]
14. 2026-11-05 Ranked Beta Season 2 begins, running until Mar 11, 2027.^[26]