Valve is finally ready to reveal Deadlock, its not-so-secret multiplayer game that thousands of people have been playing for weeks.
Over the course of August, Deadlock slowly gained attention and player count through an invitation system where existing playtesters could invite their friends. As a result, it quietly amassed thousands of players, reaching over 18,000 concurrent players in mid-August and peaking at over 44,000 players earlier this week.
Although the game was open to anyone who knew someone who played it, a splash screen at the start of the game urged players to “not tell anyone anything about the game.” Many players, of course, ignored this relatively gentle and non-legally binding warning, leading to a number of videos showing gameplay appearing on YouTube and at least one media report appearing in The Verge.
As a result, we’ve known for weeks that Deadlock is a 6v6 third-person hero shooter with a MOBA twist, as it takes place across four lanes and features aggressively respawning troop waves. It’s still in “early development,” Valve warns, “with a lot of temporary art and experimental gameplay.” However, Valve has now officially lifted its request not to release any information about the game and released its official store page.
Deadlock is currently invite-only, but now that it’s finally public, we’ll likely see Valve actively discussing what Deadlock is, along with critics and content creators, and there will likely be an influx of new players. Perhaps one of them can explain what’s up with the goofy dragon-man in the newsboy cap we see everywhere.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter at IGN. Have a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
